First of all, I would like to thank all of you who helped explain Minecraft to me before. We decided to go with the PC version. I let DS play it offline. He normally plays in Creative mode which allows him to build to his heart's content. However, it does not allow him to make things like his tools as there is no workbench (unless I am missing something). He is trying the Survival mode so he gets to make his own sticks, pickaxes, etc. But he struggles to survive the night as the monsters keep killing him. He is more focused at this point on crafting than making shelter. The monsters killing him is extremely emotional and is causing a lot of anxiety, so we are careful when he gets to play survival mode and for how long.

Is there a happy medium in some way which he has to keep his health, hunt his food, create his tools, yet not have the monsters constantly on his track?

A really good book for this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Players-Guide-Minecraft/dp/0789752239

To my mind, the main virtue of Minecraft is that my kids read about it incessantly, and talk to other kids about it...

In Creative mode, he doesn't have to create anything, because everything that can be crafted is immediately available to him. The same key that shows him his personal inventory in Survival mode would show him every single available item in Creative mode. He just has to look through the different tabs... there's one for building blocks, another for tools, etc. If he can't find what's in a specific category, there's a search function there in Creative mode.

Survival mode has various levels of difficulty, ranging all the way down to Peaceful, which means, "no monsters at all." That can be changed on the fly in the Options screen.

And if he selects the option to Allow Cheats when creating a world, he can easily toggle through the various game modes during game play. So he may, for instance, prefer to explore, collect, and build up to a certain level in a Survival world in Peaceful mode before adding monsters. He may want to have monsters but be able to switch into Creative mode to build his initial home, fly out of trouble, etc.

My DD9 has become quite the little typist and highly familiar with line command structure in this way. All of the cheat commands are described on the Minecraft wiki.

If he wants to play in Survival mode, with monsters, but still stay safe, then there are things that can be done to minimize risk:

1) Stay in the light. Monsters only spawn in the dark, so light up an area with torches around his home to keep them away. Sunlight kills most of them (creepers are a notable exception). Go home at night and sleep.

2) If night sets in, and there's no safe haven available, grab some nearby blocks of dirt or whatever, and build a simple tower by hopping up and placing blocks under you.

Or, use the cheat command "/time set 0" to bring back the dawning sun.

Also, back up the worlds. If something gets damaged or destroyed, you can copy the old file over the new one. If they put a lot of time and effort into it, it's well worth keeping backups.

I was just playing minecraft with my son last night! we got two accounts so that we can do that. We had a hilarious time building a shelter together, finding food, and then running like crazy back to our shelter when the sun starts setting.
Of course, I did accidentally hit him with my iron pickax and nearly killed him. Oops. It was very fun though! I'm looking forward to playing again and it gives us a common interest (even if I'm not quite as into it as him!)
There is alot of information and a few books out for parents about minecraft so that we know what the kids are talking about.