Unable to Place items

Hi, I bought this for my son to play on my Mac PC.  I think it was fine originally although we don't really  know how to play yet.  When we pick an item to try to place, we hit "q" on the keyboard and then the item is "thrown" in front of us on the screen and it just spins.  It doesn't actually get placed.  Has this ever happened?  I don't know if I changed some setting or what.  When I go into the settings it says to drop an item is still the letter q but it's just not dropping.  We figured out how to build a crafting table but we can't get it to drop in front of us.  Thanks for your help.  I've tried to search this issue online and I can't find anything about this.