The Message In the LEGO Bricks
Last night for his 16th birthday, we gave my son a 1,066 piece Lego set. He pulled out all of the various bags and instructions, laid them out on our dining table and got to work. Around 10 pm, I gave him his nightly meds, hugged him goodnight, and left him to continue a project I assumed would be spread out on my table for the next few days. This morning, after pouring my second cup of coffee, I turned to find that he had completed the entire project and displayed it with the box behind it to show off his hard work. (Yes, we will just gloss over the fact that I only noticed it after drinking an entire cup of coffee.)
When he was a little over two years old, he stopped talking, stopped making eye contact, and we began to suspect that he may have Autism. I agonized about what this might mean for him and for us as a family. I researched everything I could about Autism, because I had no knowledge whatsoever about Autism (aside from watching Parenthood). We took him to his pediatrician, who mostly dismissed my concerns, but referred him to speech therapy.
Eventually, his words came back with speech therapy, but the official (mild) Autism diagnosis (finally) came at the end of Kindergarten. My son has what I came to understand as High- Functioning Autism, a term I don’t love, but I won’t digress into my frustrations here on labeling kids, because that is not my purpose for this essay. Anyway. For him, this means that he struggles more with sensory issues, fine motor skills, and communication.
My son’s room is filled with large and small completed Lego sets. For anyone who has ever put together a lego set of any size, you know that this requires following exact instructions to get to the final product. Putting together a large lego set is tedious and can be very challenging. When my son was three, my brother bought him a airplane Lego set, which my husband and I had to put together, and let me tell you - it was no easy feat for two 30 something’s.
Seeing the finished Lego set this morning made me think about individual strengths and talents. My son struggles with long assignments, math, and paying attention for long periods of time. Give him an Algebra lesson and his eyes glaze over. He gets frustrated and thinks he isn’t smart. But put a giant Lego set in front of him, books of picture instructions and tiny lego pieces and he can focus in and have it completed in a matter of hours. It gives him something to be proud of and a feeling of accomplishment.
There are many people who are great at Algebra, and good for them, because that shit is hard. Try teaching it - when you barely passed it and never really understood it - to a kid who also doesn’t understand it. This is why I pay extra for his Math classes, because those teacher’s strengths are certainly not mine.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned from Autism is to lean in to those strengths and not to dwell on the weaknesses. This is a lesson that can be useful for all of us. We all have things we are not naturally gifted at. Sometimes we must do those things and they may never come easy to us. But, we ALL also have our strengths, things we are good at and come naturally to us.
Sometimes those things may not seem very useful, and they may not make us a living, but they are still so important for our well being. For me, balancing out the things I am good at with the things I struggle with, keeps me going. Focusing our attention on things that bring us joy, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of worth are vital to help us persevere when we have to face life’s challenges. And who knows? If we keep going, working hard, leaning into those strengths, it might just turn into something beautiful after all.
