Lego Legacy

January 23, 2024

Lego has long been an integral part of our family.  The memories are joyous and plentiful. In the late 1970s, I took my young daughter to the Children's Museum of Los Angeles and watched her smile as she dashed into the museum's interactive play and construction zone filled with thousands of Lego bricks with which to create. In the early 1980s, my young son spent hours carefully assembling the brightly colored interlocking plastic bricks, gears and other parts into spaceships and space ports manned by mini figures. (He regrets parting with his creations, which now yield top dollar in online auctions.)

Within the last decade, my grandkids' bedrooms were often filled with Lego as Luke assembled the Star Wars X-wing Fighter, Hagrid's Hut from Harry Potter and the White House and Rockefeller Center architecture sets while Ash put together the Lego Friends Cruise Ship, Heartlake Shopping Mall, Heartlake Stables and Veterinarian Van sets.  

While I marveled at the perseverance, dexterity and creativity of my children and grandchildren, I found that Lego could sometimes be hazardous to my health. More than once, I yelled several expletives as my feet encountered tiny, half-hidden Lego pieces.  

Just as my children and grandchildren have matured, so too has Lego. It is being used in diverse forms of therapy to help children with autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity and other disorders; seniors experiencing cognitive challenges; and adults who are anxious, overworked and stressed. 

After observing two of his young patients interact with Lego in his waiting room, Dr. Daniel LeGoff, a developmental and clinical neuropsychologist, devised Lego-Based Therapy (LBT) to encourage social interactions. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), for instance, often don't understand what is expected of them in social situations, particularly during unstructured play. The therapy provides a highly structured environment where each participant has a specific role, such as the supplier who finds the needed Lego piece or the engineer who oversees the physical building of the model.  Knowing exactly what to expect and what is expected of them, helps children with ASD feel calm and relaxed as they play.  LBT has since been found to benefit children with diverse communication and social development difficulties and is .used in more than 50 countries.  Dr. LeGoff has authored two books about Lego-Based Therapy, both published by Jessica Kingsley Publishing and is working on a third for families.

Lego are being used to provide cognitive and emotional stimulation for individuals with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.  One Lego artist started bringing Duplo (the large Lego bricks and mini figures) to memory care communities and taught some seniors how to build and create something. The artist and staff were surprised at how much the activity increased cognitive stimulation.  Occupational therapists are finding that Lego therapy helps patients retain such cognitive skills as verbal fluency, attention, executive functioning and visual spatial skills. It also provides visual, tactile, kinesthetic and social stimulation.  

For stressed, overworked and anxious adults, Lego building stimulates creativity, relaxation and the recalling of happy memories.  Nathan Sawaya was a corporate New York attorney when he started spending his free time decompressing with Lego.  Eventually he became a celebrated Lego sculptor whose works are featured in the Art of the Brick Lego exhibitions occurring in major cities worldwide.  The 2024 exhibit in Paris features one million Lego and Sawaya's 100 three dimensional recreations of such artistic masterpieces as Michelangelo's "David," Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream" along with the skeleton of a T-rex made of 80,000 bricks.

If you are now inspired, you can find Lego kits of Hokusai's "The Great Wave," which I recently saw at the Bowers Museum store in Santa Ana, California; a Tranquil Garden [Japanese style]; a Corvette; The Battle of Hogwarts; and much more.  Check https://brickset.com/sets for a database of 20,453 Lego sets and other items released during the past 74 years.

Another source of inspiration is Lego Masters, a reality competition television series that premiered on Fox in 2020.  Season Four hosted by actor and producer Will Arnett along with expert judges began last September. 

Watching the "older" competitors on the show and being challenged by family members to build a Lego set, I purchased the 600+ piece orchid set on Amazon Prime. At first, the task seemed daunting, since I had never played with Lego (wooden Tinker Toys were my thing).  But my son served as my Lego coach and showed me how to interpret and follow the Lego guides.  It took me about four hours, and I got to examine how I approach building tasks. I discovered that I have a tendency to skip directions, become impatient if pieces aren't going together easily and to feel inept if I don't get it right on the first try.  But I persevered, completed my first Lego set and got a celebratory high-five from my coach.  The orchid arrangement is now proudly displayed on a bookcase in our living room.