there is also the: don't touch these, play with your own bricks phase

Taken to the extreme as: glueing the pieces together with kragle to build an entire Lego city/world only for your son to free the Lego people from their boring repetitive prison and connect with his father on a whole new level.l when they start building a world and stories together.

Sounds like a great plot idea for a movie about Lego.

And, as a parent, after stepping on a brick for the 20th time: never again will I ever buy any more and am gathering them all to donate right now phase.

There isbalso the take all my old, half assembled, sets from the 80s and have fun phase.

i did that with my kids, although it was all completely disassembled. we had stored our stuff at my parents place, and when my dad sent the boxes (each 10kg) he said he could not find one box. so he bought another from ebay to make up the difference. then he found the lost box. my kids got more lego than i ever had. and they still wanted new stuff...