"Dad, can you buy me a spinner?" My eleven-year-old son told me yesterday. "A what?" I had to answer. And from that moment, internet search and accelerated course to discover what it is, how much it is worth and what it is for (in Xataka they explained it very well yesterday). We were on our way to the conservatory and stopped at a store to ask about him. The clerk was talking on the phone, apparently with a wholesaler, who was telling her that she needed to get it (something) already, because people were asking.
When I hung up, I asked him if they had something called "spinner" (distrust of thinking that he still told me what that was) and he said no, but that was what he was talking on the phone. So at the moment he doesn't have it, but when he arrives we will buy one. A toy that is fashionable, which helps them to concentrate (in theory), and that many teachers do not even want to see, That's right.
What is a spinner?
Not that I have now become an expert of spinner in 24 hours, but it doesn't have much mystery either. It is an apparatus with different shapes, usually similar to that of a clover, which has a fixed and a mobile part, which rotates and rotates. The fixed part is that which is held, and the other is the one that must be turned.
And that's it. My son told me he loved him because in class many children had one, so we will buy it. But in reality it was not conceived as a toy, but as an anti-stress measure, or to favor the concentration of easily distracted children.
Do you know those people who bite their nails, who are continually moving, turning things with their fingers and hands? Well, there are children like that, and in some cases, there is such a concern that they have trouble focusing on what they are doing, and take longer to do the tasks more than the task requires.
But children use it as a toy
Now, as I just said, parents (most) do not buy it from their children because they are so restless, but because it is economical and look, as they all have, because there is no reason to deny your child to use of the gadget, although you know that in a few weeks or months it will end up in a forgotten drawer.
It is becoming a toy, and many children are using it in class as such, being more problem than solution. If all the children in the class, or most, take out the device and start turning it, it can be annoying for the teacher (the vision of dozens of spinning devices does not seem very appropriate in a teaching and learning environment), and it can be an interference even for the children themselves, as many will take the opportunity to do the last trick they have learned or to show the next one how fast their new spinner spins.
Better to ban it for everyone?
Although there are schools that are treating it as if it were a toy, and therefore do not allow it in class, there are those who leave the last decision to the teacher, in case they consider that some student can be useful, for their action as a method of concentration aid, or as anti-stress.
Obviously, if a child needs it, it cannot be the only solution, since both teachers and parents will have to help you analyze the source of that nervousness or stress and create strategies to combat it: more time outdoors to burn energy , find the stressful source and try to eliminate or minimize it, offer tools to the child so that he can better control stress, etc.
That is, although a spinner Some children may do well, it is just one more solution within a larger strategy that encompasses several more actions.
And when they go out to the patio, or when they finish classes, they turn the subject around as much as they want. After all, it is nothing more than a new top, and I would almost say with less grace, because with a top you could still do a lot of things and even juggle, and this consists of making it spin and, at most, make it spin in equilibrium.
But hey, if they like it, go ahead. Everything that helps children to have fun and share time and space with other children, without being dangerous, it is good.
