Simon has really got the Lego bug now. Over the last two or three years, we've introduced him to a few really small sets, but it wasn't until probably the last six months or so where he was willing to sit down with the instructions and actually build himself. My observation was that he was well on his way to understanding the spacial relationships to pieces, but the fine motor skills really didn't catch up enough until recently. He still can't always tightly snap pieces together.
Shortly before he was born, I started to gain a real awareness about toys in the bigger sense. We had just moved to Seattle, and there was a Lego Store in the Bellevue Square Mall. It was entirely too uppity for our shopping needs, and the only other interesting store was the Apple Store. I really had not thought much about Lego in a very long time, but there were some pretty amazing sets out there. I have very fond memories of the sets I had as a child. Back then, the boxes had a flip open front, and there were plastic trays where the pieces sat (now there are just bags of pieces inside of a box). I had a police station set and a space moon base, along with a few smaller sets. While I did manage to put together some pretty sweet imitation Transformer models with the limited dynamic pieces I had, mostly it was enough fun to follow the instructions and build the sets as designed. It was super critical in my mind that every piece make it back to the right place on disassembly.
Back to 2010 though... as ridiculous as the cost was, I bought the Carousel anyway. I think it was something absurd like $250, but after the big move and about to have a child and being in a new place, I wanted to buy something for myself that was just about me. Almost two years later, I got a train to put around our Christmas tree. It would be three years before the next thing, which was the Fairground Mixer, a trailer-mounted Scrambler ride. A year after that, the completely amazing Ferris Wheel, then another train and a train station. These are all kind of expensive, really more for grownups, I think.
Which leads us to The Lego Movie. Simon has wanted to watch that thing almost every day lately. (I'm thrilled that the sequel will be about Lego Batman, who was hilarious in the first one.) That movie has a funny way of relating to our real life though, because ultimately it's about being creative and building whatever comes to your imagination, and not always following the instructions. The bad guy, President Business, wants to use the KRAGLE (i.e., KRAzy GLuE) to permanently put everything together so "people stop messing with my stuff." There's a heartwarming plot with real humans where the father doesn't want his stuff being messed with.
My big sets are obviously the coolest thing ever, and surprisingly, Simon mostly respects them as "Daddy's toys." He has a few small sets, typically in the sub-$30 range and usually some kind of vehicles, where I have to use all of my restraint to be zen about how he wants to play with them. As the kid used to play in the less interesting, autism stereotype ways almost exclusively (mostly lining up cars), now he uses his imagination. He likes to build platforms, as if the toys are amusement rides. He also likes to use the various wheel pieces propped up on wooden blocks to pretend they're the drive wheels found on roller coasters in the station. It's pretty cool to see that. He gets how things work.
To be fair, I'm not totally like the dad in the movie. His thing was about stuff being "weird" and deviating from the instructions, whereas my concern is more about, "Hey, this stuff is expensive and breaking a set is by extension expensive." While I'm not going to let him borrow pieces from the carousel or the Ferris wheel, I'm getting better about him otherwise playing the way he wants. I'm mostly thrilled that he has taken an interest, and he's getting pretty good at helping me build even the complex stuff.
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