Legos can be object of love/hate relationship with parents

Other people with small children probably understand my love/hate relationship with Legos, the little building bricks of many youngsters’ lives.


I love them because, bottom line, they are fun. Playing with them somehow unleashes an inner creativity many other toys don’t provide. One can build spaceships, temples and giant robots – all of which can be used to battle each other or as a setting for other toys.

As a child, I had a bucket of Legos that lasted through numerous other toy fads. They served as my G.I. Joes, Transformers and Star Wars figures when I didn’t have the actual product, and they were involved in many pretend futuristic wars.

I can’t recall what happened to that red bucket of Legos, but they’ll always remain in my memory.

My 6-year-old son, Braden, has a similar fascination with Legos, one which his parents, grandparents and other relatives have been more than happy to help him with by keeping the supply well stocked.

And by well stocked I mean thousands of Lego pieces, well more than any one child really needs. His Indiana Jones-themed room could be opened as a mini-Legoland if the company ever wanted to open a Stevens Point branch.

We’ve been to two Legolands – the one at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., and the one at the Mall of America in Minnesota. Both were cool places to visit, especially since they had some awesome giant Lego displays that must have taken thousands of hours to complete and hundreds of thousands of Legos to make.

The Stevens Point Legoland isn’t nearly as cool, though, as it’s a mess, which brings me to my hate for Legos: they hurt when you step on them with bare feet. This happens to me daily because Legos are something Braden is always playing with, and leaving on the floor for me to step on.

After spending an entire day over the New Year’s holiday helping Braden put together some of the Lego sets he received for Christmas, I spent the next entire day helping him to organize all of his Legos that aren’t part of a set into a Lego organizer his grandfather got for him as a present.

The organizer worked well, as it allowed us to separate the Legos by color. That seemed the easier way to categorize them, as separating them by type would have taken a week or more.

We completely filled the organizer, which technically means we don’t need to buy any more Legos. I’m sure we will, as there’s too much to love about them and too many battles to be fought using them.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Jan. 6, 2012.