The hand spinners (or fidget spinners) are the newest games of recreation. But this toy that amuses the children proves to be a real pedagogical tool for small autistic and hyperactive. Explanations.
It is the toy that hangs in playgrounds. This new gadget that children snatch at school works a bit like a top: it is held between his fingers and it is rotated at will. This object, which comes straight from the United States, is called "hand spinner" or "fidget spinner", spinner designating the action of "turning" and fidget for "tools for hyperactive ADHD children and adults with Attention and concentration disorders ", as explained on the Hop Toys website. These very discreet little tops can turn between fingers up to four minutes (for the most sophisticated models) without making noise.
They were created in 1997 by the inventor Catherine Hettinger, but were not really successful until parents of autistic and hyperactive children seized it in 2016: they saw it as a very effective way to channel Energy and stimulate the attention of their children in class. Gradually, this "educational gadget" has even become a tool of socialization for small autistic, since their comrades, intrigued, began to play with them. And of course, it is the whole of the children who took the phenomenon, as one mother of the family explains to the American HuffPost, relayed by the French HuffPost: "It is as if everything of a Everybody wanted to become autistic. "
A trend that she also sees as a threat: "I worry about schools reacting quickly and forbidding the use of spinner figets just because they are popular. I worry about imagining all the other children changing objects while my daughter will be the last to turn her little plastic top in front of the door of the school, ignored by her comrades [then] that these "fidgets" are Needed to manage stress, stimulate it. For the moment, these little tops are not yet the nightmare of the French institutes, whereas this trend hardly begins in the Hexagon.
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Editor's Rating : 9.7 out of 10
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