It’s sometimes funny to see how Zip controls the inputs he receives. He has a hand-me-down computer in my home office. It’s full of preschool and kindergarten games, and locked down with a whitelist for the internet. (I forgot to lock it once and he had a blast at YouTube. Kideos.com is a good alternative.) He plays the same things over and over again but seems to be learning from it, so we’re okay with it.

A few weeks back, I checked out what he was doing and he had the Windows Start menu and other directories open, covering most of the Starfall word game he was playing. (We love  StarFall – the extra paying section is worth it.) It looked so strange. I closed the boxes, thinking that he had just hit a bunch of keys by accident. Then, he did it again.

I was puzzled. He can’t tell me why he would cover parts of his game. He doesn’t do it everytime, just once in a while, mostly in a word-building game. My theory is that he is controlling and decreasing his inputs. Maybe it’s sensory?

Zip loves certain electronic toys but has to be in control of them. He gets upset when we press the buttons. He is also scared and upset by some but adores others. I think it’s a similar control/sensory issue, though I’m not sure exactly what is going on.

I think his aversion to the telephone is part of this issue. He’ll say hello to someone but won’t listen to anyone and hands it back to me quickly. I didn’t make that connection until a few nights ago, when Zip and I were driving home from my mom’s Memorial Day barbeque. I didn’t have a headset with me, so I was talking to my husband over speaker-phone. I also thought it might be a good example for Zip to better understand talking on the phone. Not so. He stuck his fingers in his ears the whole time! He didn’t get upset but I think I got the message he was sending. 🙂

In other computer news, I recently taught Zip how to open programs using the shortcuts on his desktop. It was self-defense on my part; he kept opening and closing Lego Preschool because he loves the opening theme. I was trying to work on my computer, and every 2 minutes, he’d ask me to open the program again! He has a kids mouse that has only one button. It’s good for him but tricky to double-click. So I taught him to click on the program shortcut and press Enter. He picked it right up! Not long after, he began opening other programs on his desktop. Then he started opening ones from the Start menu. Is it weird that I think that’s so cute?

Sometimes, he gets impatient and clicks a shortcut multiple times. I jump out of my seat and run to close them on his computer when Barney starts singing 4 times at once, each off by a couple seconds, like a maniacal singing in the round.

One of Zip’s favorites…