The Joy of Legos

How many of us have memories of when we were young playing with Legos?  I wasn’t lucky enough to have a set of my own, but I had a set of friends who were twins, and whenever I went to their house, all I wanted to do was play with their set.  In the 60’s and early 70’s the Lego sets were primarily ones that you could build houses, or cars, not the extravagant sets or the large multi sized boxes of different colors and shapes that we can get today.  Nor could we go to mecca – an actual Lego store!  So how awesome was it that Ryan became such a fanatic about them at a young age and continues to be one to this day. 

These little cubes became such an integral part of his development.  Ryan struggled with fine motor skills and putting Legos together, helped him with that.  Of course we started with Duplo, the larger sized blocks when he was a toddler, which helped his little hands work with larger blocks.  Then he progressed to the regular sized Legos.  Naturally, we had, the blocks everywhere!  Most of Ryan’s life, we’ve had the blocks everywhere!  And I truly mean everywhere.  In the kitchen, in the family room, in the living room, in the bedrooms.  Under chairs, under couches, in the nooks and crannies in the kitchen.  So of course in the middle of the night when we would walk through the house without shoes on, we’d step on one, and oh the pain!  We’d kick them and they’d go skittering across the floor in every direction!  (Annie, and my book club mates, that’s for you!!)  Years later, we’d still  find LEGO pieces hiding.

As Ryan grew up, he progressed to different sets.  They did cause frustration, and sometimes he’d get so upset that he’d yell and scream and throw the partially created thing across the room.  Even helping him out sometimes was a struggle.  His attention span was so short and we just couldn’t get him to settle down enough to get back to the project.  But this never stopped him from going back to it the next day.  His unwillingness to give up entirely was something that we would see in just about everything he would try.  As he grew older, we also experienced Ryan’s ability to super focus, something typical of people with ADHD.  Once he would get started on a LEGO project, he could sit for hours working on it without a break.  He’d sit there talking to himself, or singing to himself.  We knew that if he started on a project, we wouldn’t be able to interrupt him.  So we learned to talk to him before he started to set time limits,  or we wouldn’t’ let him start if we knew that we needed to go somewhere or do something else. 

Now as a college student, Ryan  hardly has any time to work on new projects.  This morning, he pulled out a project that he started on months ago and finished it.  He was so excited and the end result is so cool.  It gave him something to work on and succeed at.  He’ll put it in his room with all of the other (many other) incredible things that he’s made over the years.  I don’t know what he’s going to do with them all.  But that’s OK.  They all have a special place in his growing up with ADHD.