Help! My Child Wants Me To Play Lego!

Does this look familiar?

Do you have one of these, too? A Lego box of doom treasure trove, full of carpet fluffs and hair exciting potential.

Once the Lego sets have been constructed, deconstructed, partially lost, remade into other things and generally Muddled Up, this is where the Lego goes.

What shall I build? aka The Uh-Oh Moment

When Charlie saw the photo for this blog post, his eyes lit up. For him it was, "Woah! Cool!" for me it's more, "Oh. Chaos."

Are you, like me, prone to a slight sinking feeling when you are asked to play Lego, or worse, build something? Your child looks at you expectantly as you scrabble around the box of doom, frustratedly failing to find anything that will make a coherent, well, anything.

Charlie realised my weakness quite soon, but he also, rather sweetly, found that I had a compensating strength - and maybe you do, too.

"My Mum is quite bad at building Lego," he said, "But she's good at finding pieces."

And so it is that we can spend many happy minutes together, playing Lego: he does all the building and I root about in the Lego trove, seeking out specific pieces at his request. It's oddly satisfying.

He gets to be in charge and I get to hang out with my boy, pressure off, not required to design or build anything. Win:win.

What if your child really doesn't know what to build?

There have been times, especially when he was younger, that Charlie really didn't know what he could build. He looked to me to help him come up with ideas and design things.

I failed. I looked for pieces to stick together but it didn't make sense. We were both disappointed.

Don't panic! I've got your back!

This website is for you: you can flick through the pictures and see the crazy selection of things Charlie came up with from his random collection of Lego. They are photographed here for your inspiration and amusement.

And instructions...

If you need more guidance, I'm taking it further by developing a collection of step-by-step photo instruction guides. I know you won't have the exact same Lego collection as us but that's where your piece-finding ability comes into play, right? As your child looks at the pictures and calls out what they need next, you can find something near enough; something similar or something that will do instead. It's good teamwork: your child gets to be 'boss' and you get to model creativity and resourcefulness. That's win:win, for sure.

Visit the Secret Files page for access to Charlie's original Lego designs as step-by-step photo guides.