Editor’s note: This article started as a Facebook post. One morning my cousin (who was like a sister to me growing up) updated her status to: “Another chapter in my never written on paper but often thought of parenting guide is ‘How to Quickly and Flawlessly Repair an Intricately Developed Original Lego Creation Without the Child Learning that Mom Accidentally Dropped It.'”
Several friends liked it and told her she needed to write that parenting guide. But she stays pretty busy with three young boys, so we’ll have to be content with just a snippet for now 
How to Quickly and Flawlessly Repair an Intricately Developed Original Lego Creation Without the Child Learning that Mom Accidentally Dropped It
By Amanda Hawkins
Our family’s Lego building team is comprised of three brothers. The oldest creates the story line. The middle crafts the vehicles. The youngest forms the characters.
They each add their own flair to the pieces. As I listen to them make their plans, I hear comments such as, “Make sure we have enough heads,” “Who can help me find more gray bricks?” and my favorite, “Awesome! That’s what we needed!”
When they are satisfied, they invite me in to share the fun. I enjoy listening and watching my boys play out their story line. They trust me to be gentle with their emotional connection to their little plastic world. They also trust me to be gentle with the pieces themselves.
Who knew that the awesome Lego spaceship couldn’t really fly?
Me.
Have I always known that?
Yes.
Apparently, my children forgot that detail when they parked it in the super-secret hangar, also known as the laundry basket. So, when I went to the laundry room at 5:30 a.m., I expected to load the washer and go back to bed. Those plans were derailed when I heard the crash of plastic on the hardwood floor.
I turned on the light and found a shattered segment of my kids’ imaginations. I felt around for the individual pieces. There was the windshield, landing gear, tail lights, and wait…where’s the little gray thingy?
The cats and I frantically searched for the last part. I crawled on my hands and knees realizing that I may have to clean the whole house to find it. Finally, one of the felines decided to move over and revealed the piece. Now, onto the next task.
I went to the kitchen table with a hand full of Legos. I laid them out and had to determine who might have built this particular ship. If it was the oldest, then details don’t matter as much. I can wing it and go on. If it was the youngest, I wouldn’t be holding this many pieces.
Dang it! I’m holding the middle child’s creation. I can tell because of the symmetry and attention to color and detail. I looked for clues, such as matching pieces on the underside and a hole for the elusive gray piece. I quietly went to work reassembling the spaceship and making sure it looked perfect. I heard the washing machine go into its spin cycle, and I turned off the lights and headed back to bed.
The kids woke up and headed straight for the Legos. I heard them begin a new day of storytelling and brick building. They won’t know that in the wee hours of the morning I had inadvertently crashed the spaceship. They will never know how long the cats and I spent on our own search and rescue and rebuild. They don’t need to know that from now on, I will pay extra close attention to detail in case I have another middle of the night emergency Lego assembly.
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