The Fidget Fad

 

Trying to teach middle school students the last weeks of school is always a challenge, even for veteran teachers like me. However, this spring a popular gadget is interfering with the learning process, despite its inflated claims of being a panacea for students with special needs. Advertised as the “must have toy for 2017,” fidget spinners are appearing in classrooms, much to the dismay of many teachers. While these handheld plastic flat triads with three bearings that can be spun supposedly help students with ADD, ADHD, OCD, autism, and anxiety, they are creating anxiety for many of the teachers whose students are bringing them to class.

Despite no studies showing their effectiveness, these fidget toys claim to relieve and reduce stress and anxiety, increase focus, build concentration, and help with boredom and restless hands. Some companies even market the fidget spinners as “educational toys.” The fidget spinners are also described as “addictive,” the one adjective I will agree is true. The low cost of these spinners––anywhere from $1-20, with most priced around $5––makes them affordable for nearly all students. The fidget spinner takes the place of the typical spring appearance of rubber bands to shoot, paper airplanes to throw, or the ever-popular erasers to toss. However, students claim they need these spinners to focus and be calm. Either they bought the hype or think that their teachers are that gullible.

To summarize, a fidget spinner is an attractive nuisance. If one kid has a spinner, everyone in the class wants to see it, touch it, spin it; they are mesmerized by these gadgets. They want to pass them around so that everyone can enjoy all the benefits of these miraculous inventions. Certainly, this does help them with boredom, as the ads claim, yet their focus and concentration are upon a stupid piece of plastic with metal bearings and not on what they are supposed to be learning in class.

Moreover, the sound of the spinning bearings poses a distraction. One ad claims that the low humming sound actually “helps promote a sense of calm.” As the teacher, that humming sound makes me want to take that spinner and throw it out the window, so it clearly fails to calm me. I suppose these fidget toys have become necessary because students cannot bring their phones or video games to class, and they simply do not know what to do with their hands when they aren’t holding an electronic device to entertain themselves.

Yet another disruptive fidget toy appearing in classes this year with similar claims of positive effects is the fidget block. Ranging in cost from $5-10, these cubes have various buttons and knobs on each of the six sides to provide sensory stimulation. While some of these fidget blocks claim to be silent, others make the same annoying sound made by the clicking of a retractable ink pen. Of course, one of the problems with the fidget spinners or blocks is the potential for dropping the item, which proves distracting for the entire class. However, these fidgets are slightly better than stress balls that roll down the aisles.

As an autism mom, I understand that some children do need sensory toys to help them focus and/or remain calm. However, as a teacher, I see many students jumping on the sensory issues bandwagon who don’t really need a fidget toy but just want to have something to play with in class. Because teachers must protect the privacy of our special needs students who are mainstreamed, regulating the presence of sensory toys becomes problematic. Consequently, I’ve had to accept the fidget toys so long as they remain in the owner’s hands and are used properly. However, when they start sharing their spinners with their friends and or taking them apart, they become mine until class is over.

If, indeed, students truly need to have sensory toys, I would recommend the following alternatives: pool splash balls, squeeze blocks that look like Legos, and desk buddy rulers. The advantage that all three of these items have is that they do not roll, would not inflict injury if tossed across the room, are silent, cannot be taken apart into pieces, are inexpensive, and have actual sensory value to students with sensory needs. The splash balls intended for playing in swimming pools are made of soft material lightly stuffed with polyester filling. They are lightweight, smooth to the touch, squeezable, and unlike stress balls, cannot roll easily. Squeeze blocks offer the same benefits. Desk Buddy rulers offer the various tactile stimulation of a fidget cube without the noise or likelihood of falling off the desk and rolling on the floor. If parents are considering buying sensory stimulation toys for their children with autism or ADD/ADHD, I would recommend any of these three items instead of the fidget spinners and cubes.

While students who actually have stress, anxiety, and focusing issues should have their needs met, those claiming to have these problems should not be playing with toys that distract them, their classmates, and their teachers. Good alternatives exist for students who truly need sensory stimulation, and parents and teachers should seek these items instead. Fortunately, teen fads rarely last long, and spinners will likely spin out of favor just as quickly as they arrived in classrooms this spring. After dealing with students doing the "dab" dance arm movements in the fall, we teachers know that annoying fads will eventually go away and be replaced by something equally annoying. In the meantime, we secretly hope that those parents who bought their children fidget spinners and cubes will be treated to a summer of humming and clicking and dropping them so that they can understand why we found these toys so annoying in our classrooms this spring.

“Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.” Romans 12:12

Preparing for Middle School

This past Friday marked the end of the first semester for my students as well as the halfway point of the thirtieth year of teaching for me, all of which I have spent at the same middle school teaching seventh grade English. Thanks to wonderfully understanding and supportive administrators, I have been able to balance my teaching career with being an autism mom because I only teach three classes in the morning and am home with Alex the rest of the day. While I’m at work, Ed, who teaches afternoon classes as a college professor, takes care of/supervises/entertains/teaches Alex. Through the years, we have realized how blessed we truly are to have jobs that allow us to spend so much time with our son.

Friday also found me sitting in the dentist’s chair having my semi-annual appointment for cleaning and checking my teeth. In chatting with my dental hygienist, she confided that she’s concerned about her son (who has no special needs) starting middle school next year, even though he does quite well in school. Knowing that I teach at the middle school where her son will attend, she began asking me questions about the school that I was happy to answer for her. Apparently, I was able to reassure her that our school is a welcoming place and to allay some of her maternal fears because she told me that she felt much better after talking with me. In return, she assured me that the tooth I need to have crowned will not need a root canal, so I felt better, too.

Yesterday, I was chatting online with an autism mom friend whose child will also be attending the middle school where I teach next year. Feeling déjà vu, I had a conversation with her that was quite similar to the one I’d had with my dental hygienist the day before. Sometime we autism moms forget that all moms have worries about their children; ours are just amplified a bit as we try to protect our more vulnerable children from the world. The same topics of concern arose—opening lockers, navigating hallways, and changing classes and teachers. Another issue both moms mentioned was the major change of going from a small elementary school to a large middle school with an enrollment of over 800 students. Understandably, parents worry that their children—especially special needs children—could get lost in the shuffle.

In preparation for her child to start middle school, my friend has spoken with a special education teacher who offered several good suggestions to help make the transition easier. The teacher recommended requesting that her child have a locker next to the homeroom teacher who could provide extra help, asking for more time to move between classes if needed, having the child’s teachers sign the assignment notebook to ensure accuracy of recording homework, and allowing the child to go to the guidance counselor whenever the child feels overwhelmed and needs a break. As I told her, our school quite commonly makes these accommodations for students with special needs, and she should make certain to communicate with the school ahead of time to put a plan into place before school starts next year. Moreover, I told her, as I had told my dental hygienist the previous day, that many parents help their children by giving them the opportunity to practice before school starts. Specifically, many parents bring their children to school in the summer and help them find the location of their classrooms so that they don’t have to worry about that when school starts. Since lockers can often frustrate sixth graders, parents also often help them learn their combination and how to work the dreaded dial on their lockers in the summer, allowing them to master this skill before the first day of classes. For many students, rehearsal eases their fears and makes them feel better able to face the changes of middle school.

Many parents discover that communication with teachers may become more difficult when their children reach middle school because they have several teachers instead of one. However, many schools offer e-mail, phone, and voice mail access to teachers, and parents should contact teachers regarding concerns. In addition, many schools offer online web pages where they can access their children’s assignments and grades, and parents can easily keep track of what their children are doing and how they are doing. Using these tools to communicate can prove vital to parents, especially since middle school students sometimes communicate less with their parents and don’t always volunteer information readily, as they may have during their elementary school years.

While all parents can help ease the transition to middle school by preparing and practicing with their children and opening lines of communication, special needs parents have the additional responsibility of advocating for their children, who may not be able to advocate for themselves. Of course, teachers have an added responsibility to be flexible in dealing with children who have special needs to help them be successful in overcoming the obstacles they face. Many years ago, I had the opportunity to hear a presentation by veteran teacher and dynamic speaker Harry Wong, who influenced my approach to teaching early in my career. He spoke of how important the first day is to students and how teachers need to prepare for that first impression. As he elaborated upon seven things students want to know on the first day of school, one in particular resonated with me: “Will the teacher treat me as a human being?” As more and more students are diagnosed with autism and more students are mainstreamed into regular classrooms, teachers need to recognize that those children are more than their labels, and we must treat them as human beings. In dealing with high maintenance students of all types, I often stop and think how I would want a teacher to treat Alex and try to muster all the patience, compassion, and fairness I would want shown to him. While middle school can be a tough time for all—students, teachers, and parents—with some preparation, practice, communication, and understanding, fear of the unknown can give way to excitement for new experiences and amazing progress. In the end, as in all times of change in life, things nearly always turn out better than we expect.

“Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair.” Proverbs 1:3