Jj is for Jottings 53.  To Fidget or Not to Fidget?

Fidget spinners are all the rage at school and in homes at the moment – flat, triangle-shaped pieces of hard plastic or metal with a ball-bearing in the centre that the user spins between two fingers.  Are they just a distraction in the classroom?

Research by Dr. Dustin Sarver, Assistant Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre, tells us that children with ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) actually need to move in order to utilise their working memory.  Short term memory is when you remember a telephone number, for example; working memory is when you are asked to rearrange the numbers.  You can read more about memory here https://educatingalpacas.com/auditory-sequential-memory-useful-figures/.   Earlier research revealed that children moved more as more demands were put on their working memory, but were no more active than children without ADHD when tasks did not involve working memory.  However, children without ADHD typically did worse when they moved more.

So what to do?  Thankfully I don’t have to deal with that problem in a classroom.  If a fidget spinner is brought into speech therapy and it is clearly a distraction, it is removed for the duration of the session.  I suspect that, when a fad like this is involved, the children who would not benefit from the movement provided by a fidget spinner – i.e. the majority – would feel rather hard done by if one or two children were allowed to play with a toy in class which they were also itching to play with.  I think I would find a quieter, less distracting “movement facilitator” for the children who need them (having first  explained the necessity to the whole class) and leave the fidgets spinners for the playground.