The Monster loves his electronic devices.

I think, given the opportunity, he’d happily run the iPad down to zero battery life on a daily basis.  He’s long known how to handle the various iDevices around our house and the Nooks as well, so he’s been – in that realm – as electronically-fluent as most kids his own age.

Now, in some ways, the iPad is a nice motivation for him to work on educational stuff – he has a few games that he really likes, but most of those are memory games. He has some attention/sensory games that he can do very well, and he can be convinced to use those from time to time.

He’s not patient enough really to play through other academic games, and many of them are not quite geared towards children on the spectrum.  Basically – they reward him even if he gets things wrong, and this isn’t constructive, especially since he’s already realized that the game isn’t keeping track of how well he’s really doing.

On the other hand, he likes almost anything that makes noise.  And likewise… the sound prompts don’t necessarily help.  If the negative sound is more pleasing to him than the positive one, he’ll intentionally chose the wrong options, even when he clearly knows the right ones.

While I’m typing this, he’s playing some “Monster’s Inc – Run” game, which is a perfect example.  The idea, I gather, is to make Mike run and collect gold coins.  If he falls off the track, though, he screams… and the Monster would rather listen to that.  So I’ve been listening to a half-hour of Mike screaming now as he plunges into the Abyss, over and over and over…