Let’s build a Lego house and relax our troubled minds

Over the past few years, there’s been a definite movement towards looking back to childhood to find wellness solutions for adult problems. Remember the adult colouring book craze of 2015? It really was a craze. According to figures from Nielsen Bookscan, 12 million adult colouring books crossed the tills that year as stressed-out grown-ups picked up their felt-tips and attempted to scribble their way back to happiness. I tried it myself, with a very chic colouring book based on vintage Vogue covers, a Christmas gift from my best friend. It certainly took me back.

As I chose Schiaparelli pink for a ballgown, I was back at Christmas 1980, when my parents refused my request for a Fashion Wheel toy, telling me that I could draw the outfit outlines myself. As a result, the adult colouring book trend left me feeling mostly guilty as I remembered the numerous half-finished sketchbooks languishing in the loft.

But the trend for casting off your worries by pretending you’re six again isn’t going anywhere soon. Since colouring books have fallen from favour, the grown-ups have been taking over the playground, monopolising the sandpit and the slides. There are even “ball pit bars” in Shoreditch and Soho. Personally, I hated playgrounds when I was small enough to use them and if you’d stuck six-year-old me in a ball pit, I’m pretty sure it would have scarred me for life.

Revisiting playgrounds as an adult, with various nephews, god-daughters and the children of friends, I thought it still all looked fraught and exhausting. If I was ever left in sole charge of a child and had free rein regarding playtime plans, I would always try to encourage something that could be done at the kitchen table instead. Drawing, painting, playing with Play Doh... I’m most proud of inventing a game called “Room Service”.

If you’d like to play it yourself, it involves the adult doing the ironing (the actual ironing), in a “hotel basement”/the kitchen, while a small child running on Duracell batteries, is sent dashing to and from various rooms in the house delivering imaginary “room service” orders, which arrive on the adult’s phone. Always make sure to put the phone rather than the iron to your ear when those imaginary orders come in.

But Room Service was no substitute for the best childhood pastime of all: playing with Lego. Creative, clean, quiet and safe (unless you step on a loose piece in bare feet), and best done sitting down. When the children in my life started entering the Lego years, baby-sitting became a whole lot less traumatic.

A fortnight ago, I was lucky enough to spend a weekend playing with Lego again. Dashing through the station on my way to meet friends, I grabbed a Lego kit for their seven-year-old son Louis, keeping my fingers crossed that he wouldn’t have grown out of it yet. Being child-free, I have pretty much no idea what’s age-appropriate when it comes to children’s gifts and the years do pass very quickly. I recently asked a friend whether her twin boys were choosing their GCSE options this year. They’re in their third year at university.

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Anyway, thankfully Louis is still into Lego. While his parents watched the England/New Zealand rugby semi-final, Louis and I opened the box and got started. I was designated “piece finder”, while Louis was the master builder, telling me what to look for, then taking the tiny bricks from my outstretched hand and clicking them into place. At seven, Louis considers himself to be already well beyond the Lego sets designated for his age group. Though he deigned to play with the 7+ set I’d brought along, he proudly told me that he’s graduated onto Lego’s “Architect” range, which contains models of the London and New York skylines and the Eiffel Tower. Thus he made light work of the baffling diagrams in the box I’d brought along.

It was so lovely. So peaceful and companionable. My only wish was that I might have got to click some of the pieces into place myself. While Louis wasn’t looking, I unclicked a couple just have to have satisfaction of putting them back again and once I was back home, I found myself online googling Lego Architect, determined to buy myself a box.

Lego as we know it was born in the workshop of Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen, who began his company making wooden toys in the 1930s. The word “Lego” is an abbreviation of the Danish phrase “leg godt”, which is translated as “play well” and the company motto is “Only the best is good enough”. By the 1940s, Lego had branched out into plastic toys. It was Ole’s son Godtfred who saw the potential of plastic building bricks in the 1950s. Since the bricks we know and love today were first patented in 1958, 400 billion of the things have found their way into toy-boxes worldwide. In 2015, Lego was declared by Brand Finance to “the world’s most powerful brand”, replacing Ferrari.

Could playing with Lego be the new adult colouring? Abbie Headon thinks so. In her book, Lego Build Yourself Happy: The Joy of Lego Play (Dorling Kindersley, £9.99), illustrated by Jenny Edwards, Headon suggests 50 mindful activities to help you use your Lego time to best effect.

Reassuringly, just because you’re a grown-up, you don’t need to splash out on a surprisingly expensive Architect kit. You don’t need to buy anything new at all. If you’ve got a 50-year-old set in your attic, that will still work. The very first Lego bricks can be used with the latest set off the production line. Just six 2x4 bricks (those which are two studs wide and four long) can be put together in more than 915 million – yes, that’s million – combinations. There’s a message in that. As Headon writes: “Sometimes, you might feel limited by the options life – or your Lego collection – has to offer. But if you embrace what you’ve got and add in a little creativity, you can find that there are more possibilities than you first thought.”

Headon has suggestions for builds to aid relaxation, builds to bring you joy and builds to help you connect with friends (as I did with Louis). She has suggestions for builds to help you sleep. Even packing your Lego bricks away can be a mindful process. Headon write: “When you’ve packed your bricks away, leaving a smooth and uncluttered space where you were building, you’ll feel a sense of calm from things being in their proper place.” Try telling that to a six-year old.

I’m definitely putting some Lego on my Christmas list though. My favourite of Headon’s suggestions was the “bedtime kit”, a selection of 10 or so bricks to be kept on the bedside table and used as a means of winding down instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media. She writes: “Try building yourself a peaceful scene and sending yourself there in your mind, far away from the cares of the day… Picture yourself there. Take three deep breaths… Let the scene fill up your senses… Then put your build away and let yourself drift off to sleep, thinking of this most relaxing landscape…’’

But always, always make sure that the immediate area on the floor around your bed is clear of Lego bricks before you get up in the morning.