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For my son’s 4-year-old birthday, my sister-in-law gave him a big box of LEGOs. While it comes with a set of instructions on how to make a windmill, a lighthouse, or even an igloo, you are encouraged to use the pieces however you want and build to your own imagination.
My son loves LEGOs, and one of the reasons I think is because it is open-ended play. Unlike close-ended play (e.g., shape sorter, puzzles, mazes) where there is a single “correct” way of playing, the possibilities are endless with open-ended play. There is no right or wrong. Children are free to explore and express their creativity however they want.
LEGO is very different from other games such as JENGA (another of my childhood favorites) in which you take turns pulling out one block at a time until a tower eventually tumbles down. It’s just a matter of time.
Sometimes I wonder whether we approach parenting too much like JENGA. We evaluate every decision through the lens of whether it is the "right move" or the "wrong move.” Should we start sleep training, or co-sleep? Should we feed on demand or on a fixed schedule? With older children, how much screen time should we allow? How much should we push our kids beyond their comfort zone?
We want our kids to succeed. We want them to be healthy, happy, independent, and responsible. We want them to have the best chance in life. So we do our best to align our parenting decisions with these goals. But once in a while, there may be a nagging voice saying, "What if I mess up? What if I made the wrong decision?" Or some of us may be scarred by how our parents treated us when we were little. We want to "get it right" with our kids. So, we hold our breath as we pull out the JENGA block, hoping that it is not on us that the tower falls. But that is a great deal of pressure. It may be fun and exhilarating for a 10-minute game. But what if that anxiety lasts for months or years. It can be paralyzing.
What if there is a different way of parenting? What if parenting is less about making all the right decisions? (Because, guess what? The tower will eventually fall, no matter how good a player you are.) What if you simply knock down all the blocks, and instead build something unique and beautiful like you would with LEGO pieces.
There is a difference between parenting out of fear (of making a mistake, messing things up, or not being good enough) and parenting out of freedom. One phrase I use a lot with my kids is, "Let's try." It may not work. You may not like it. It may fail miserably. But let's try. What if we apply that to ourselves as parents? What that means is that we give ourselves grace. We make the best decision we can with the information we have at the current moment. If it doesn't work out, we don't react as though the JENGA has collapsed. We see it as a piece that needs to be removed from the LEGO board and may be better suited somewhere else. The focus is on enjoying the process of building.
