"Through Play, I Connect"
Legotherapy: A Therapeutic Resource
René Schubert *
*Correspondence to: René Schubert, Consultant Neurologist, Ain Alkhaleej Hospital, Al Ain, UAE.
Copyright
© 2026 René Schubert, This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received: 18 July 2026
Published: 01 August 2026
“It isn't just a simple toy, but a therapeutic resource that invites the construction of oneself and of the world. Each piece that clicks into place represents the possibility of psychic and emotional reorganization. (..) Like other expressive approaches — art, drawing, music — Lego® is an integrative language. It awakens the imagination, organizes thought, and facilitates therapeutic communication with children and adults.” (SCHUBERT, 2024)
In my previous articles on this topic, I present the Lego® building toy as a therapeutic tool and as a resource for diagnostic assessment in the context of child play therapy, highlighting its potential to develop cognitive, emotional, and social skills. Based on my clinical practice, which began in 2001, I observe the strong engagement of children and young people with these pieces, which make it possible to build, take apart, and rebuild scenarios, situations, places, and characters, stimulating imagination, cognitive flexibility, and creativity.
Lego®, in its simplicity and modular structure, represents what is most essential about therapeutic play: the possibility of building, deconstructing, and rebuilding the world — internal and external — in a creative, meaningful, and relational way. This toy sparks a special interest in children and young people, fostering organization, concentration, emotional expression, and socialization. Lego® colorful, structured pieces create a safe, stimulating environment that enables symbolic and affective communication in educational and/or therapeutic settings.
This interlocking toy offers multiple levels of complexity that make it possible to observe how the child communicates, builds bonds, expresses emotions, and copes with challenges. In this way, the professional conducting the sessions can identify strengths, difficulties, and relational or cognitive aspects that are relevant to the educational and/or therapeutic process.
In the 3rd volume of the book “Orientação Familiar” (Family Guidance), I point out that this toy and the play it involves function as a playful stand-in for adult reality, allowing the child to move between fantasy and reality, learn rules and limits, seek solutions, and encourage cooperation. In addition to stimulating logical reasoning and abstraction, playing with Lego promotes emotional release, symbolic reframing, and tolerance for frustration — essential aspects of emotional and cognitive development. This kind of play, therefore, is also a way of building bridges — between the real and the symbolic, between generations, and between therapist, educator, parents, relatives, and their young enthusiasts.
International research confirms the effectiveness of this approach in educational, therapeutic, and social contexts. Several studies reinforce the benefits of playing with Lego® for socio-emotional neurodevelopment, language, attention, motor skills, and creativity (SCHUBERT, 2024)
I usually advise parents and caregivers on the value of playing together with their children, suggesting the use of Lego® at home, at school, and in social settings as a playful way to build bonds, communicate, and stimulate psychomotor skills, cognition, and emotional learning. This shared activity promotes listening, empathy, and understanding of the child's symbolic language.
There is also, in the adult world, the methodology and materials developed by the LEGO® Group, Lego Serious Play®, applied in corporate settings by facilitators, consultants, and therapists who use the same principles of symbolic construction of scenarios and characters to foster connection, communication, teamwork, and critical thinking among adults.
Therefore, the therapeutic use of Lego® goes beyond simple play: it is a projective, symbolic, and relational tool that allows the person playing (child, young person, or adult) to assemble, build, and externalize internal content in a safe and creative way. Through construction and deconstruction, the client — individually or in groups — experiences processes of symbolization, repair, and psychic reorganization, which are central aspects of psychotherapeutic processes.
Materials for starting the builds
Lego® offers a huge variety of kits, boxes, cases, and sets for all ages, from children as young as 2 to adults. The sets contain pieces of varying colors, shapes, and difficulty levels, in different quantities, and all come with instruction manuals that likewise vary in complexity depending on age, target audience, number of pieces, and build time. There are so many kingdoms, scenarios, characters, builds, themes, and universes that a Legotherapy facilitator can adapt the play-therapy/educational strategy to each individual client or interest group. For example, one might propose building a city, a spaceship, a forest, car models, robotics projects, architectural models, a superhero scene, medieval knights, dinosaurs, and so on.
Given this, it is important to first introduce the building pieces to the child and determine what level of challenge and stimulation is right for each case. Over these years of clinical practice, I have used various sets from Lego® and other brands to encourage this type of play. Ready-made kits help get the play started right away, without depending on having a large stock of pieces at home. Sometimes I use just one Lego® Classic case to build the models suggested in the manual, and then encourage the child to try free-form builds and tell stories based on what they've built.
There are several Lego® books, or books by fans of the brand, such as “5-Minute Builds” or “The Lego Ideas Book”, for quick builds, games, and challenges using these building blocks. Such books work very well as activity books. In my practice, where I already have a fairly large collection of mixed pieces and leftovers from other kits, these books offer fresh ideas and short activities and projects for children who may not want to take on long builds or complex manuals. On mobile phones there are apps that help build simple models and offer ideas and tips in language accessible to children and adults. It was by drawing on these references that I developed, together with my child and adolescent clients, the activity described below.
From the micro to the macro
Over the years, together with my clients, I developed a presentation and building kit made up of selected pieces. In a range of colors, the set contains a total of 41 pieces in square and rectangular shapes — small, long, thin, and larger pieces.
The purpose of this is to introduce the Lego® pieces to clients, working on identifying pieces, colors, and shapes; naming; meaning-making; organizing the pieces; and setting challenges toward building small structures such as: an airplane, a house, a human figure, a horse, a tower, a rocket, and so on.
As clients become familiar with the pieces — handling them, feeling them, listening, sensing the possible ways they fit together, and being surprised by the building possibilities — they come to realize the breadth of what can be communicated, established, organized, given new meaning, and transformed.
The therapist proposes challenges ranging from simple to more complex, moving the client from the possibilities offered by 4 to 8 pieces up to being able to create a build of their own choosing that may include all 41 pieces.
Some remarks gathered from children seen in sessions, ranging in age from 6 to 12, after activities with this kit: “I didn't think you could make so many things (..) surprised (..) a mini world (..) a geometric horse (..) I managed to do it (..) it worked (..) I'm happy with myself (..) so cool (..) colorful (..) fun (..) can I take it home?”
I highlight this last remark, asked by an 8-year-old client, because the idea is for the child to build in the office, test out possibilities and difficulties, learn to organize themselves with these pieces, tell stories based on the project they built, take it apart, put it in the bag, and take it home. Showing the parents the possibilities and the builds already made, and proposing challenges to parents and relatives to build together with them.
I received a number of comments from parents and caregivers about this activity, done first in the office and then extended into the home environment: “we take part together (..) I had never played with this before, he taught me how to fit the pieces together (..) we built a city together (..) it's amazing how handling these pieces calms him down (..) to me it looked like a disassembled puzzle, and then she went on building it and telling stories”.
Some family members sent me photos and videos of the builds made by the children, or of the stories created and told as a family. Topics relevant to play therapy and family guidance came up after this activity, such as: difficulty organizing and tidying up the materials; lost pieces; possessive behavior toward the materials and finished builds; difficulty handling frustration; expressing and naming emotions; miscommunication between parents and children; aggressive or war-themed content that raised concerns for parents; the language used during play; and children's preferences and aversions toward certain characters, traits, themes, or universes, among others.
I chose this activity for the symbolic, communicative, connective, and interactive richness it brings to the therapist–client–family intersection. It is not an activity confined to the therapist–child bond; it includes the parents and the family, and it opens the door, through something simple, to a range of more complex topics.
And this is just one of several activities that can be proposed using the Legotherapy approach. Another one I particularly enjoy is building your own character using Lego® figures, prompting reflection on identifications, behaviors, qualities, flaws, dreams, aspirations, and so on.
In Legotherapy, we go from the simple to the complex, from the tiny project to the grand one, from ordinary stories to expanded, interconnected universes — what matters is giving the client a space for expression, communication, and enjoyment along the way. As we say in this pedagogical-therapeutic approach: Learning by having fun!
“When therapist and child build together, the process stops being merely diagnostic and becomes co-creative and integrative. Building together with Lego® is, in itself, a metaphor for psychic reconstruction.” (SCHUBERT, 2024)
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