11 ms·

As a child i never got why adults stand on Lego, especially as i knew they found it painful (and if it were my Lego i found the risk of broken pieces concerning

As a child i never got why adults stand on Lego, especially as i knew they found it painful (and if it were my Lego i found the risk of broken pieces concerning!) Obviously I appreciated that it was an accident but to me it seemed like the most easily avoided accident - just look at the floor and pick a route that doesn't involve stepping on it. What's a suprise is, as an adult, i still feel the same way. Sure, I've larger feet now and I'm perhaps a shade less precise, but unless it's approaching total floor covering there would usually be routes. Some commenters below implied that people might enjoy the pain but that doesn't seem like it's the case: people really complain about this happening, but irrationally it doesn't seem to bother them enough to avoid it. No idea what the solution is. Perhaps one could go all-in and make it even more dangerous: spread drawing pins on the floor too, it's sort of the nuclear option, but that would get attention, in turn resulting in less pain. Thankfully it's not a problem i need to solve, but I'd love to hear if someone had a better idea (besides something like insisting kids clear it up, which is no fun!)

klyrs 4y ago
> (besides something like insisting kids clear it up, which is no fun!) Instructing kids to clean up their mess isn't just wholesome fun, but it also teaches a valuable life skill! Might not be much "fun" for them to start, but kids actually benefit from having responsibilities. And, if you make it a precondition for something they want to do, they'll be motivated!
- burrows 4y ago
  > but kids actually benefit from having responsibilities. Do they? I’m not sure what I learned from my parents insisting that I “clean” my room.
  - nmstoker 4y ago
    Maybe it teaches a recognition of pointless overhead and a healthy distrust of people who would fit in too well in Compliance departments?
    - burrows 4y ago
      Mission accomplished.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Most people, eventually, learn the value of cleaning their domicile (there are exceptions, of course). I think parents live in hope that their kids can learn that value earlier than they themselves have, or at least help share their lessons learned with their kids - this is true of many things in parent/child relationship -> we want/hope better for our kids. And let's not minimize the "I'm tired, I had to clean your room every night for the past 3 days/weeks/months/years/decades, you need to put some effort too!" aspect of course :-> It works various degrees of well or poorly with various kids, parents, and circumstances - like virtually anything else in parenting.
  - bigDinosaur 4y ago
    Presumably you learnt that people will be unhappy if they're in a position of power over you and you don't do what they say.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    I make my 3 year old participate in cleaning up her toys. I always volunteer to help her, and we do it together. We do it consistently enough so that it's a habit, and she rarely complains. She visited her cousins recently and said, "those boys are very messy. They should clean up their toys!"
    - burrows 4y ago
      And you desire this to continue? Isn’t she just mindlessly parroting what you say?
      - sgtnoodle 4y ago
        No, she has a mind with her own thoughts and emotions. Most children aren't zombies.
        burrows 4y ago
        And you know this how?
      - klyrs 4y ago
        You sound like you enjoy your freedom to live in squalor. Did you know that clutter leads to stress and anxiety? I teach my kid to fight for worthy causes, you're describing self-defeating pettiness.
        burrows 4y ago
        > You sound like you enjoy your freedom to live in squalor. Right. And more generally I just enjoy freedom. > Did you know that clutter leads to stress and anxiety? Thanks Mr Gladwell > I teach my kid to fight for worthy causes Right, because somehow you’ve got access to the secret knowledge of what is and isn’t worthy. > you're describing self-defeating pettiness. People flirt way too much on this site.
        klyrs 4y ago
  - mattlondon 4y ago
    It was always easier to find the toy you wanted in a clean and tidy room. Same thing applies as adults and non-toy items too.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    I don't expect spic&span. The alternative is my kid can never find anything, because everything is in a pile on the floor. That's how you get ants (or worse).
    - PebblesRox 4y ago
      Yes, I know it's time to clean up the playroom when they stop playing with toys and start doing constant mischief instead. Toys become a lot more attractive once there's space to play and the pieces that belong together are not mixed up with a bunch of random junk.
  - pawelmurias 4y ago
    Learning to clean. If you never did it as a child you would find that horribly annoying as an adult.
- q-big 4y ago
  > And, if you make it a precondition for something they want to do, they'll be motivated! For me, this was rather the beginning of my insanely deep hate for authorities and the power that they (ab)use.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    There are thousands of ways how to sell it to the kid, obviously the driest factual ones won't get much sympathy. But yes kids are hard, I would love to see comparison of 19th century 10-kid family and now... I feel like we are doing something wrong to have raising kids well so hard, but maybe its just that circumstances and expectations have changed completely
    - oblio 4y ago
      > But yes kids are hard, I would love to see comparison of 19th century 10-kid family and now... I feel like we are doing something wrong to have raising kids well so hard, but maybe its just that circumstances and expectations have changed completely Families with 10 kids basically abandon most of them, after the first 1-2 and probably except for the last 1-2. Bigger kids take care of smaller ones, they become surrogate teenage parents. Humans are quite smart and so kids manage to survive, but it doesn't mean being a kid in such a family is a good life comparatively to being a kid today, in your regular family with 1-2-3 kids.
      - dustymcp 4y ago
        I had a girlfriend who was 1 out of 14 (2 large families moving together) she was basically a mother at 10-12 years old doing chores washing clothes etc. they had 0 grown up time since both was working, needless to say alot of fuckery went on there..
CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago
Or keep your floor free of sharp things and relax, even stumbling around in the middle of the night. It’s not hard - the kids legos things being an exception.
danielheath 4y ago
Lego all over the floor is easy to avoid. It's when a single piece, of similar color to the floor, is left out. If you don't see that lego is present, it's much harder to avoid.
- nmstoker 4y ago
  Yes, this is an excellent point i had overlooked. The colour ranges now are far wider so this could come up quite easily now. The stealth Lego piece risk!
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I see you didn't have a red, black, and yellow carpet in your house growing up. Not sure what decade that was from, but was still around when I was growing up in the 80s.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Yes these are the unexpected one that hurt you. When you are taking a step back, or when your kid is crying in the middle of the night and you walk to his room all lights off and step into one that was left somewhere in the house (not necessarily in his room).
NikolaNovak 4y ago
"There would usually be routes" ah; I believe you are mentally imagining a kids' room floor full of Lego, and adult inexplicable inability to avoid them :) For me at least, that's not the threat vector. It's when you go to your office or living room, a seemingly safe place at a safe time and your mind is not running "Obstacle avoidance program", and unexpectedly there's a single sharp piece of lego hidden in the patterns of the carpet or underneath your office work chair, or even when it's in the middle of the bathroom floor in the pitch dark at 3am when you're running to the toilet --> let me tell you, THAT one REALLY hurts, and usually results in secondary or even tertiary damage :P
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  The other one is when there's some urgent problem in the lego-strewn area - when you need to remove the block from the hand of the kid who's whacking the window or the toddler, there's no time or attention to spare for walking carefully.
- mc32 4y ago
  The only thing worse than stepping on legos are protruding rusty nails --just thinking about it makes me recoil.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Hah, core memory triggered. As a kid I jumped off of a swing onto a rusty nail. Yes, I was barefoot. I seem to remember it went in pretty smooth, and barely felt it, but then I had to pull it out. I actually think Lego has been more uncomfortable.
    - taneq 4y ago
      Ugh, why did I have to read that? >.< I had a similar experience walking through mud and finding an old rustic tin can with its lid sticking out. Sliced up a wide shallow flap of skin, I think I still have the scar…
    - dustymcp 4y ago
jaggederest 4y ago
It's about salience and paying attention - most people don't do it most of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... To most people, walking around is a type 1 task - they aren't really thinking about it, it just happens automatically. Having to pay attention to avoid things is a negative experience. I'm with you, I actively pay attention when I'm walking around, but I suspect we're significant outliers in the general population.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- synu 4y ago
  One can’t help but wonder why people would make mistakes when they could simply choose not to.
  - oblio 4y ago
    Because paying attention to not make mistakes costs time and time is valuable. We only really pay attention for the big decisions.
tshaddox 4y ago
Do you ever stub your toes? I’ve been known to do that on furniture that I positioned and haven’t moved in over a year, with the lights on.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nkrisc 4y ago
Nobody intentionally steps on LEGOs, so why does it happen? Because it’s unintentional. Either they didn’t see it or they did and simply misused their foot placement. Not very puzzling. Haven’t you even done something accidentally that you didn’t mean to do? Maybe bumped your head on something?
dustymcp 4y ago
Its not the obvious dangers that lurk in every room where the kids reside, its those hidden fuckers, the one that is on the end of the stair you first see when you actually stepped on it and fall over screaming, those are the murder lego's. It is easily preventable get a huge box for all legos, legos are only played with on a carpet thats easy to pick up and put back in the box, at that point most of it is around that area.

klyrs 4y ago

> (besides something like insisting kids clear it up, which is no fun!) Instructing kids to clean up their mess isn't just wholesome fun, but it also teaches a valuable life skill! Might not be much "fun" for them to start, but kids actually benefit from having responsibilities. And, if you make it a precondition for something they want to do, they'll be motivated!

burrows 4y ago
> but kids actually benefit from having responsibilities. Do they? I’m not sure what I learned from my parents insisting that I “clean” my room.
- nmstoker 4y ago
  Maybe it teaches a recognition of pointless overhead and a healthy distrust of people who would fit in too well in Compliance departments?
  - burrows 4y ago
    Mission accomplished.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Most people, eventually, learn the value of cleaning their domicile (there are exceptions, of course). I think parents live in hope that their kids can learn that value earlier than they themselves have, or at least help share their lessons learned with their kids - this is true of many things in parent/child relationship -> we want/hope better for our kids. And let's not minimize the "I'm tired, I had to clean your room every night for the past 3 days/weeks/months/years/decades, you need to put some effort too!" aspect of course :-> It works various degrees of well or poorly with various kids, parents, and circumstances - like virtually anything else in parenting.
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  Presumably you learnt that people will be unhappy if they're in a position of power over you and you don't do what they say.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  I make my 3 year old participate in cleaning up her toys. I always volunteer to help her, and we do it together. We do it consistently enough so that it's a habit, and she rarely complains. She visited her cousins recently and said, "those boys are very messy. They should clean up their toys!"
  - burrows 4y ago
    And you desire this to continue? Isn’t she just mindlessly parroting what you say?
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      No, she has a mind with her own thoughts and emotions. Most children aren't zombies.
      - burrows 4y ago
        And you know this how?
    - klyrs 4y ago
      You sound like you enjoy your freedom to live in squalor. Did you know that clutter leads to stress and anxiety? I teach my kid to fight for worthy causes, you're describing self-defeating pettiness.
      - burrows 4y ago
        > You sound like you enjoy your freedom to live in squalor. Right. And more generally I just enjoy freedom. > Did you know that clutter leads to stress and anxiety? Thanks Mr Gladwell > I teach my kid to fight for worthy causes Right, because somehow you’ve got access to the secret knowledge of what is and isn’t worthy. > you're describing self-defeating pettiness. People flirt way too much on this site.
        klyrs 4y ago
- mattlondon 4y ago
  It was always easier to find the toy you wanted in a clean and tidy room. Same thing applies as adults and non-toy items too.
- klyrs 4y ago
  I don't expect spic&span. The alternative is my kid can never find anything, because everything is in a pile on the floor. That's how you get ants (or worse).
  - PebblesRox 4y ago
    Yes, I know it's time to clean up the playroom when they stop playing with toys and start doing constant mischief instead. Toys become a lot more attractive once there's space to play and the pieces that belong together are not mixed up with a bunch of random junk.
- pawelmurias 4y ago
  Learning to clean. If you never did it as a child you would find that horribly annoying as an adult.
q-big 4y ago
> And, if you make it a precondition for something they want to do, they'll be motivated! For me, this was rather the beginning of my insanely deep hate for authorities and the power that they (ab)use.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  There are thousands of ways how to sell it to the kid, obviously the driest factual ones won't get much sympathy. But yes kids are hard, I would love to see comparison of 19th century 10-kid family and now... I feel like we are doing something wrong to have raising kids well so hard, but maybe its just that circumstances and expectations have changed completely
  - oblio 4y ago
    > But yes kids are hard, I would love to see comparison of 19th century 10-kid family and now... I feel like we are doing something wrong to have raising kids well so hard, but maybe its just that circumstances and expectations have changed completely Families with 10 kids basically abandon most of them, after the first 1-2 and probably except for the last 1-2. Bigger kids take care of smaller ones, they become surrogate teenage parents. Humans are quite smart and so kids manage to survive, but it doesn't mean being a kid in such a family is a good life comparatively to being a kid today, in your regular family with 1-2-3 kids.
    - dustymcp 4y ago
      I had a girlfriend who was 1 out of 14 (2 large families moving together) she was basically a mother at 10-12 years old doing chores washing clothes etc. they had 0 grown up time since both was working, needless to say alot of fuckery went on there..

CoffeeOnWrite 4y ago

Or keep your floor free of sharp things and relax, even stumbling around in the middle of the night. It’s not hard - the kids legos things being an exception.

danielheath 4y ago

Lego all over the floor is easy to avoid. It's when a single piece, of similar color to the floor, is left out. If you don't see that lego is present, it's much harder to avoid.

nmstoker 4y ago
Yes, this is an excellent point i had overlooked. The colour ranges now are far wider so this could come up quite easily now. The stealth Lego piece risk!
- pixl97 4y ago
  I see you didn't have a red, black, and yellow carpet in your house growing up. Not sure what decade that was from, but was still around when I was growing up in the 80s.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Yes these are the unexpected one that hurt you. When you are taking a step back, or when your kid is crying in the middle of the night and you walk to his room all lights off and step into one that was left somewhere in the house (not necessarily in his room).

NikolaNovak 4y ago

"There would usually be routes" ah; I believe you are mentally imagining a kids' room floor full of Lego, and adult inexplicable inability to avoid them :) For me at least, that's not the threat vector. It's when you go to your office or living room, a seemingly safe place at a safe time and your mind is not running "Obstacle avoidance program", and unexpectedly there's a single sharp piece of lego hidden in the patterns of the carpet or underneath your office work chair, or even when it's in the middle of the bathroom floor in the pitch dark at 3am when you're running to the toilet --> let me tell you, THAT one REALLY hurts, and usually results in secondary or even tertiary damage :P

PebblesRox 4y ago
The other one is when there's some urgent problem in the lego-strewn area - when you need to remove the block from the hand of the kid who's whacking the window or the toddler, there's no time or attention to spare for walking carefully.
mc32 4y ago
The only thing worse than stepping on legos are protruding rusty nails --just thinking about it makes me recoil.
- doubled112 4y ago
  Hah, core memory triggered. As a kid I jumped off of a swing onto a rusty nail. Yes, I was barefoot. I seem to remember it went in pretty smooth, and barely felt it, but then I had to pull it out. I actually think Lego has been more uncomfortable.
  - taneq 4y ago
    Ugh, why did I have to read that? >.< I had a similar experience walking through mud and finding an old rustic tin can with its lid sticking out. Sliced up a wide shallow flap of skin, I think I still have the scar…
  - dustymcp 4y ago

jaggederest 4y ago

It's about salience and paying attention - most people don't do it most of the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... To most people, walking around is a type 1 task - they aren't really thinking about it, it just happens automatically. Having to pay attention to avoid things is a negative experience. I'm with you, I actively pay attention when I'm walking around, but I suspect we're significant outliers in the general population.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
synu 4y ago
One can’t help but wonder why people would make mistakes when they could simply choose not to.
- oblio 4y ago
  Because paying attention to not make mistakes costs time and time is valuable. We only really pay attention for the big decisions.

tshaddox 4y ago

Do you ever stub your toes? I’ve been known to do that on furniture that I positioned and haven’t moved in over a year, with the lights on.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nkrisc 4y ago

Nobody intentionally steps on LEGOs, so why does it happen? Because it’s unintentional. Either they didn’t see it or they did and simply misused their foot placement. Not very puzzling. Haven’t you even done something accidentally that you didn’t mean to do? Maybe bumped your head on something?

dustymcp 4y ago

Its not the obvious dangers that lurk in every room where the kids reside, its those hidden fuckers, the one that is on the end of the stair you first see when you actually stepped on it and fall over screaming, those are the murder lego's. It is easily preventable get a huge box for all legos, legos are only played with on a carpet thats easy to pick up and put back in the box, at that point most of it is around that area.