Sean in the Computer Age

At last.  Sean has never been interested in being on the computer at home.  He does use one at school, has his own laptop there actually, as part of his IEP, which he uses for assignments and such.  He is quite willing to watch his brother play Minecraft on the desktop, but has never initiated gameplay himself, even though Skyler has shown him how to.

Most parents are pleading with their kids to get them OFF the computer, and here we are doing the opposite.  But, we did have a breakthrough late in the autumn, when Bob got himself a new device (a Playbook, which he isn't as thrilled with now, but that's another story), and said to Sean, "Why don't you take the iPod?"  Sean had some familiarity with it, and it has been a lovely thing for him since he took ownership.

Naturally the mother gets worried; is he going to lose it, is he going to get obsessed with it, and so on, typically "Sean" type problems.  But, with encouragement from his teacher at school (who has the class members with devices look up various things online for their schoolwork), and from the vice principal, who has linked Sean up with some other students wielding iPods, and are willing to show him games, he is using it pretty much daily.

Regarding responsibility for it (because Sean has little sense of money and value of things), it has worked out.  One day he came home and said his teacher had "taken it away" because it wasn't charged, at which point I went immediately back to school and found it plugged into a charger in the classroom and brought it home.  He now charges it at home, and occasionally forgets it here, but always manages to keep track of it at school, which is a relief for me, and a good way to build responsibility in him.

He has found some games that he likes, Temple Run being one of them, Angry Birds another.  The only part that drives me mad is that he likes repeating some of the odd noises VERY LOUDLY, over and over again.  Quite maddening when I'm driving, and perhaps Evie is sleeping.  "No weirdness Sean", is what I tell him, partly because it's annoying me, but also so that he doesn't attract the stares as "the weird kid", not that he really cares, I don't think.  It's one of the beauties of this disorder, that he really doesn't give a hoot what anyone else thinks.  That works out well when it comes to normal teenage angst and friend drama, that just doesn't exist with him, but it does present some difficulties for his older brother, who just has to get used to Sean wearing too-short pants to school because they're comfortable on him, for instance.  Sean doesn't care what anyone thinks, but Skyler, of course does!

Nonetheless, it is nice to see him walking around with his iPod, doing a "normal" sort of pre-teen/teen activity, fitting in a bit more with the kids at school, in his flood pants and God knows what other idiosyncrasies.

Here he is coming home from school, taking a picture of Mom, I think, or reviewing pictures/video he had taken at school.  Yes, this became a bit of a problem too, when he was always videoing fellow classmates, and had to learn to ask first if it was OK.  Then he lays around on his bed, replaying his favorite parts and giggling endlessly....