Critical Mass
June 24th, 2010 by ToniBrother is addicted to Legos. In addition to actually building with his own collection he spends time on Lego.com not only playing the games but watching the videos where the creators tell why and how they built particular sets. He’s five but they interest him to no end.
All of this is well and good as far as creativity and engineering skills go but the Lego disaster that was his room had reached a critical mass. He wouldn’t let anyone in for fear they would “mess something up”. Even he would only go in to sleep or to quickly pick up a piece for play elsewhere.
This picture (where I was really trying to catch our visitor from the other night) doesn’t even begin to capture the amount of pieces on the floor and in the bed and in every available nook and cranny (including the closet).
Last night, Will made the suggestion that perhaps Brother wasn’t being obsessive as much as he was overwhelmed and trying to deal as best he could by simply spreading the Lego’s out into groups which to us seemed like a mess but to him was order. Hmm. I pondered this and today the room looks different.
First, I asked Brother to pick out 15 of his very favorite creations. He immediately burst into tears. I immediately backed off.
Take two, I waited until Brother was absorbed in a game elsewhere; then I stealthily entered his room and began to place his best, most elaborate creations in a small box. I took the box to him and returned to the room to stuff every remaining Lego in a large bin for storage. I worked as quickly as possible because I knew if he caught me there would be much weeping and gnashing of teeth. But no, he came in at one point to ask for a rock monster, which I dug out of the growing mass, and then left without a word.
Later I set up a small table and arranged the best creations on it telling him, “Now you can have all you Lego’s out at one time, k?” His response, “This is the shiniest room ever.” followed by a sigh of relief.
It took 45 minutes for him to notice that the rest of his collection was missing and while he briefly looked for it he quickly settled in to my explanation that they “are on vacation until we can figure out a way to organize them.”
Now, he’s playing with his trains which haven’t seen the light of day in many moons.
Amazing.







