My Son Alex’s Leapster 2

If you smiled when you read this title, then you’re in on the secret.  We gave our son Alex, age 6 1/2 a Leapfrog Leapster 2 for Hanukkah this year and he was very excited.  Once you put the batteries in the device and turn it on, you select a language and then create a profile by typing in your name.  This is when we hit a snag.

He typed ALEX and pressed the OK button on the screen but no matter how many times he typed it, it would not accept his name.  It didn’t even take ALEXANDER.  It took SAM, MICHAEL, ALFX, and almost any other name but the one we gave him.  I tried it a few times and gave up.

It turns out that the letter combination ALE is restricted by the word filtering software built into the device.  I found this out only by searching the online forum to find that other families were hit by this Orwellian word filtering software.  We were able to proceed by using A L E X as his name in the device.  Disaster averted.