Building bricks?

[Grumpla]

My DS is 19mo and LOVES playing with Duplo. Unfortunately all he wants to play is "rip the blocks apart and fling them away!" No interest at all in fitting them together, he's made a couple of half-arsed attempts to bang one at the other and then nada. I spend HOURS showing him how it works and it's beginning to drive me nuts!

Has anyone else had a Derek the Dismantler instead of a Bob the Builder? Any games that might help?

He's 19 months old! My 27 month old has only recently started to build towers - he's not interested in construction toys which he has to push together yet, much.

Let him do it in his own time - he's having fun :)

28 month old, even

DD is 19 mo & today her favourite game was tip the mega blocks box upside down, fill it up, tip it upside down, fill it up andso on and so on.

I'd build a tower she'd knock it over clapping and shouting 'yeeeaaahh' then take all the bits apart and shout 'again again' we did this for about 20 minutes & she didn't build a single bit...

Knocking over seems to be much more fun than building at the moment, although she will build a tower out of normal blocks..... then triumphantly knock it over. What fun!

sounds like a schema, a pattern of behaviour related to learning

he will probably quite like:

snapping breadsticks/pulling apart magnetic trains/snapping apple slices/ripping wrapping paper/clipping and unclipping fastenings like buggy clips, high chair straps, velcro

Oooh yes, exactly right HingCogNeeto, he especially likes taking tangerines apart - NEVER eats the bits though :( and playing with clips.

I guess I am just looking forward to Lego castles a bit too much :)

yes, agree with the others; he's just too little yet. It's a complex conceptual task, building things: you have to have an idea of what the thing should be and then be able to break the task down conceptually and sequentially into the various actions required to make said object (gather bricks, order sizes, connect, continue until idea is realised). See what I mean?

DD is a knocker-down and pourer-out of duplo too :o

Both mine started like this, but a few years on they love duplo, play with it every single day, its just fantastic stuff!