If I see one more bloody .,..

[pieceofpurplesky]

Stress cube, stress snakey thing, stress twisty thing I think I will scream.

They are the new water bottle/glue flipping craze.

If a pupil had a genuine need then they do a great job but I know that the 16 kids out of 25 do not need them. They are just fiddling. Then the pupil next to them wants a fiddle. Then someone wants a go on the snakey thing sand swaps it for a cube.
Please tell me it's not just me.

Those stress spinner things have suddenly become fashionable in my school. The amount of times I've had to tell a kid that it cannot reduce their stress by spinning on the table next to them, but it will increase mine is ridiculous. I suspect they will be banned soon.

I just came on to say spinners! They fly quite well though

I totally agree. I hate them and would burn them all if I could.

Tomorrow is PSHE day. I may need several

I just confiscate them. hardly see them now.

It's slime in my school. They are all obsessed and making their own. Everywhere is sticky and no one concentrates!!

It's pencil grips in our school. Which would be ok but they lose them, they get them mixed up with other people's, they leave them on the communal pencils, they pick bits off them and break them...

Absolutely. It's the big fad on teaching groups as well- 'I have a little one who can't concentrate, WWYD?' Immediately 10 posters will suggest toys which are supposed to help the very small amount of children with addition support needs.

And the ones that are like dog chews, complete with sucky, slurping noises. Yuk.

Where have they got these cubes and spinners from? I'm glad to hear it's a craze. It's annoying me so much

I knew it before I opened the thread!
Spinners, cubes, play dough, glittery play dough that looks like polystyrene balls, magnetic stones that click, click, click.
All the fiddling is driving me absolutely crazy!

When I started primary school a hundred years ago we had to sit with our hands folded either in front of us or behind us. Why did we get rid of that?

Thank God it's not just me. Thought I was getting too old.

Our Senco started to suggest one for a child in my class recently - the look on my face stopped her mid-sentence.

So many Miss Trunchbulls on here... I write as the parent of a (probably very annoying) Year 4 child who is a terrible fiddler, for her it provides comfort and distraction from the terrors that she revisits virtually every minute of every day after a disastrous and catastrophic babyhood living in extremely harmful and dangerous circumstances with her birth parents.

I've never dared to send her to school with a tangle toy for fear of evoking the type of responses evinced on this thread. Good job, too, it would seem.

I wonder how the education system has deteriorated so much that teachers are so jaded dealing with the very children they must have set out to want to help at the beginning of their careers? It's a genuine question rather than a goody one as I'm noticing school/s becoming less kind and tolerant in the pursuit of excellence. It makes me want to weep when I read threads like this on here.

Well, moomin, this is the staffroom. As in schools, it's a place for teachers to offload so we can go back into class refreshed and perfect.

Moomin. Your child is one of the very few who truly would benefit from a tangle toy. Not one of the many who just see it as an excuse to avoid getting on with work and interacting with friends.
One child quietly using such a toy is completely different to 20 kids in a class using them and swapping them and shouting across the class about them.

moomin there are some children that these toys genuinely do help and you shouldn't be afraid of suggesting one for use in class.

There aren't fifteen children out of the thirty in my class that need them.

No, moomin, if you read my post I said these are supposed to help the very small amount of children with additional support needs, like your daughter.

The problem is that any child who plays with their shoelace is given one, instead of being told to sit properly.

Moomin we are discussing the current craze for them. Not the use of them children who need it.

Moomin, nice of you to visit a specific part of this site, just to make that comment.
Your daughter obviously needs this and I'm sure that a decent school would be aware of this and support her needs.
This is a very different situation from twenty teenagers producing these in the classroom, one of them exploding in the classroom floor when squeezed too hard under the desk, spending precious lesson time confiscating said items. Pretty harmless compared to other stuff but still annoying.

I wonder how the education system has deteriorated so much that teachers are so jaded dealing with the very children they must have set out to want to help

Exactly. And teachers are leaving in their masses as the job has become untenable for many many reasons.

Thanks superpug for your gracious welcome! I'm sure I'm not the only parent of a child at school to visit this (open) forum to try to gain an insight into the current thinking of teachers on issues in the classroom.

I also like to partake of the AIBU board but I consider myself THE most reasonable person in the world...(!) Similarly, my favourite indulgence is to while away time on the Style & Beauty board when I am mainly to be found resembling a scarecrow dragged through a hedge backwards. It's the beauty of a (relatively) censorship-free society, no?

Thanks for the feedback in all the responses above, I'm sure it must be frustrating in the extreme to have to deal with multiple fiddlers in the classroom. I do understand the pressures on teachers and I despair of the current system, with its narrow focus on SATS excellence (I write from a primary perspective as that is all I have experienced to date) but it would seem it is my lot in life as an adoptive parent to fight the corner for my child who was disadvantaged the second she was born.

And teachers do the same - times 30. We have to consider the needs of every child in the class, and if we are distracted by something, there is a knock-on effect to all 30, not to mention all those other children who are distracted by the noise/movement and cannot ignore it without comment. In my opinion, it has to be a severe need before it is warranted. It may well be that your child does warrant it. Many don't, however.

I don't think I was the only person calling you out on your comments?
It is a completely open forum. But I don't generally feel the need to join a thread to label an entire profession as cruel and akin to Miss Trunchbull. Say what you want but if you make comments like that, do you not expect people to defend their profession? I'd expect a similar reaction if I made a sweeping comment about doctors etc.
I think it was pretty clear that myself and others are obviously sympathetic in terms of your daughter but don't really like being labelled as being in a cruel and nasty profession.
Quite the opposite and I think the initial tone of the thread was supposed to be light hearted? They are a bit of a pain in school.

I have a fiddle cube for myself!! The on/off button is awesome.

It's slime here too. At least my classroom smells of Almat soap liquid rather than sweaty preteen! (Clutches at straws!)