The new girl on the Lego block

Fresh back from Legoworld (the 4 day Lego extravaganza at Copenhagen's Bella Center) and let me introduce our new 'friend', Olivia.... This young lady is one of a range making up Lego's new line of figures, Friends, (that come packaged together with the lifestyle accoutrements of a dream house, wardrobe, ice cream parlours, shops, tree houses etc etc) due to hit the shelves here in Denmark later this month. Well, they're making quite an entrance, these little girls, in their pink and purple boxes.

Angry parents are calling upon Lego, amongst others, to 'Stop Gender Based Marketing'. A petition no less to exert pressure on Lego not to 'reinforce gender stereotypes'. Steady on.....

As a mother of both a boy and a girl, I have a couple of years of experience at observing play and seeing the different paths of development that each of my children is following. My son, a long time before he could say the word Lego, developed a fascination with cars, trucks, trains, police vehicles, fire engines and the like. I don't think that I ever steered him in this direction and the fact that my daughter, born into a playroom full of vehicles and train tracks but sometimes preferring to carry my handbag and dress up in my clothes, leads me to conclude that nature rather than nurture plays an important role.

For my son, and his love of all vehicles, Lego was the obvious choice of toy so he could build and rebuild his own selection of transportation. Incidental to all this, he enjoys creative and independent play, hones fine motor skills and learns about concentration. Until he started school last year, he was not at all keen to sit down with a pen or a paint brush. He naturally leaned towards construction. I think this is different for girls. My daughter is not yet two years old and yet she already likes (and can confidently hold) pens and pencils. My amateur opinion is that the skills that my son is developing through Lego, his sister may develop through arts and crafts: different but parallel paths of development. Obviously, these are not set in stone and each child finds their own way.

So, why is Lego being raked over the coals? The 'problem' appears to have started with the Lego kits for trucks, trains, rockets, aeroplanes and emergency rescue vehicles etc, which have created a world of creative play for boys from the age of 4ish; now known as the 'Lego phase'. These kits don't appeal to girls because, as research apparently shows, while the boys are playing with their plastic colourful bricks, the girls of the same age are into the 'princess phase'. For them, its still about the imagination and building a fantasy world but one inhabited by different people (princesses rather than firemen etc) and with a different colour palette. It took four years of research but Lego has discovered that girls today do like construction but in a different way to boys. Lego's answer? The 'Friends' range in its pink and purple hues.

As an aside, I'm slightly sceptical about the supposed colour palette of play. A visit to the Lego play area at Louisiana Museum for Modern Art (just north of Copenhagen) where all the bricks are yellow takes care of that theory. Both girls and boys enjoy creative play when the toy is stripped down to its most basic.

The real problem lies in what is going on in the lives of today's little girls - how did they find themselves in the pink and fluffy 'princess phase'? The above Lego campaign comes from 1981 - there's only a hint of gender based marketing but it is far from stereotypical and speaks volumes about what has happened over the last 31 years. The multicoloured creation the little red head girl holds is what I remember about playing with Lego in my own childhood. I didn't need Lego bricks to be pink or mini figures to be little girls to recreate the world of my imagination. Lego didn't create the 'princess phase' so can we really blame them for simply responding to it?

The 'friends' figures are fully compatible with the other Lego ranges. Can't the Lego phase and the princess phase co-exist in harmony? Ultimately, if it is agreed that Lego is good for children then isn't it better that both girls and boys have an opportunity to enjoy it?

If girls are missing out on developmental skills because they don't want to play with Lego trucks, dragons and ninjas, here's a clever way to make it attractive to them: princess meets astronaut. Perhaps then the minds of little girls will entertain dreams of space travel? Who knows?

For my part, I'm looking forward to showing Olivia around the neighbourhood. Good luck Lego!

Danish life: child's play

If there is one word synonymous with Denmark, it has to be 'Lego'. And if there is one toy that most children play with at some point in their childhood, whatever the country, class or gender, it must also be the brightly coloured plastic bricks that inspire creative play like nothing else.

And here in Copenhagen, Lego is everywhere. Not only are the shops full of it, it is at the airports (for sale and for play whilst weary parents collect the baggage from the conveyor belts) and in the schools and public buildings, there is also a room of plastic building bricks at our local community run indoor play area. My children love the stuff; not just my 3½ year old son (who has amassed a considerable collection of rescue vehicles, police vehicles, aeroplanes, motorbikes and the like all put together by carefully following instructions and honing his fine motor skills) even my 10 month old daughter is happy to pull apart the Duplo bricks and to make 'music' banging them together.

My 'Xenophobe's guide to the Danes' says that the word 'lego' derives from the Danish words leg godt, which mean 'play well'. From what I witnessed this weekend, this is something of which the children (and adults) of this country should be proud.

The pictures I am posting here were taken at 'Lego world'. Not to be confused with 'Legoland', the former was a four day exhibition/festival that took place at the Copenhagen equivalent of London's Olympia. The festival was less about rides and thrill seeking and more about bringing together people who love to play and build using the simple medium of primary coloured plastic bricks.

There were endless displays of carefully constructed models, intricately and meticulously pieced together: animals, cities, dinosaurs, cars, fire engines. I didn't see the full extent of it (given that my kids were most impressed with the piles of Duplo provided for free play!!) but from what I heard the creativity of the lego enthusiasts knew no limits...

This exhibition wasn't just about lego builders showing off the fruits of their play, it was also about letting children (and bigger kids!) join in. There were numerous areas carpeted off and strewn (ankle deep it seemed) in building blocks; from the big chunky Duplo bricks for the youngest visitors to the more sophisticated motorised and computerised elements for the more discerning pros. But in each area inadvertently on display was the 'play well': children focusing, sharing and giving expression to their imagination.

Letter to my pre-school son

This weekend we took another trip to Copenhagen to find a place to live and to visit what I hope will be your new nursery. Whilst we dragged you from airport to airport, from house to house and along the snowy streets, you hardly complained but instead found excitement in the novelty of it all; new buses, different taxis - the points of reference that provided you with some measure of familiarity. Seeing you bravely take it all in made me proud and your father and I have gone to great lengths to explain to you that we are moving to a new house and a new country, 'far far away'. You seem to understand and to embrace the adventure. But the excitement on your face when we finally came back to London and you went back to your room to play with your toys told a different story: it was all okay because it had only been temporary. We didn't stay in Copenhagen this time, we came home. Did it confuse you to take you on a reconnaissance trip?

Today it was back to business as usual; nursery and back to your 'best friends', the other little 3 year old boys whose toys you share and fight over and whose worlds are so intensely entwined with your own.

What are we doing to your world to take you away from all this familiarity? From this 'social network' that you have built up for yourself at such a tender age and with such fragile social skills? Everyone we speak to says that the timing is perfect and its best to relocate abroad with a young family when the children are pre-school. Whilst you're still a pre-schooler, there is no formal 'education' to be interfered with and you don't have to be taken out of 'the system' and to fit into another with all the challenges that that can bring.

I know in my heart of hearts that three years living abroad will enrich your life and give you an education that doesn't come from reading books or listening to someone tell you about far away places.

It might feel as though we are plunging you into the unknown without any regard for what is important to you. Believe me when I say that this is not so. We are doing this for you too. You are robust and you will find friends in new places. You will grow to love some of the things that will at first seem so alien and unfamiliar. Don't be scared. One day Copenhagen will feel like home. One day I hope you will know that we are taking you out of your comfort zone in order to broaden it so that as you grow up you will yearn to explore and discover new cultures of your own. The time it will take you (us) to settle into our new Danish environment and to find our groove is an episode we will look back upon as a mere blip.

Please know that I lie awake in bed at night and I wonder if we are doing the right thing for you. However hard you will find it to say goodbye to your friends when the time comes, it will be harder for me to look on.