Storytime
From even my first grad school placements in public schools, there’s one thing that clearly stood out to me: My goodness are these kids fidgety.
I had thought that working with middle- and high-school-aged students, I at least wouldn’t have to worry about wrangling them into their seats, but reality was a bit of an eye-opener. Sure, most of them could stay in the general vicinity of their seats, but so many of their bodies wanted movement, constantly.
How could I accommodate?
Rarely has my speech therapy room, (or shared space, closet, co-opt, whatever you’d prefer to call it)…rarely have I had access to a space that could accommodate movement. We could barely fit in a couple students around a table crammed against the wall let alone have room for jumping jacks or dance breaks.
What I did have room for though, was a small basket (or sometimes a ziploc bag) with a collection of fidget tools inside for the students to use while we were in speech therapy. I’ll refer to these as community fidgets, as they were open for any student that walked in the room to use if they felt they could benefit from a fidget.
Some of the things I learned were certainly expected, while others surprised me. I’m writing about my experience with using community fidgets so you can learn and better prepare for implementing them successfully into your own spaces.
5 Things I learned when I kept fidgets in my speech therapy room
1. Managing designated fidgets is easier than managing improvised fidgets.
The students who can become distracted by fidgets will invariably find something else to distract them when they don’t have access to fidgets. The distractions I supplied (i.e., various fidget tools) were far easier to deal with than having to anticipate any and all of the other creative distractions students could come up with or supply themselves.
If the student needs a tactile fidget and does not have one, they will seek to create one. Thinking putty and fidget cubes are less messy than markers and hand sanitizer. Trust me. You never know when a student decides to carry a Sharpie in their pocket and start drawing on their hand as soon as you turn your head.
If the student needs a visual fidget and does not have one, they will seek to create one. Sand timers and liquid bubble timers are less disruptive than marbles and game pieces crashing to the floor. Who would have thought.
Some of your fidgety students are experts at turning just about anything into a satisfying distraction. It’s a skill they’ve developed because their brains need the additional stimulation. If the students don’t have access to tools to provide that additional stimulation, they will create it.
If you provide the fidget for the student, they won’t have to spend as much mental bandwidth plotting an improvised fidget and can in turn allot more mental bandwidth to attend to the therapy activity. Yay, everybody wins!
Just because a student may look like they’re distracted doesn’t mean they aren’t paying attention to you, and just because a student may look like they’re paying attention to you doesn’t mean they aren’t distracted. I learned that I vastly prefer the distractions I can control and predict over the ones I can’t.
2. Students who need fidgets might decline them.
Some of the students that need a fidget won’t reach for one. And that’s okay. Waiting it out and allowing them to come to their own conclusion is worth the effort.
Especially if you’re working with middle and high schoolers like I do, some of your students may be under the impression that using fidgets isn’t “cool.” Or that they are somehow above needing a fidget, like someone who outgrows needing a nightlight to sleep.
In this case, trying to make a student use the fidget can backfire. They need to understand their own brain needs first and then choose to accommodate themselves or not.
When you take away the choice, the student may pull back further, as they’ve lost trust that you will respect their autonomy. Most kids and teenagers especially value and crave having a sense of autonomy.
Even if we think we can give them a shortcut by telling them their needs, it will be far less effective in the longterm than the student coming to the realization themselves. Rapport is massive. It takes a lot longer to win back a student’s trust after it’s been lost than building that trust with them. Lack of trust threatens your buy-in, and makes just about everything in speech therapy more difficult.
3. Using fidgets alongside your students builds rapport.
On the flip side, if you want to build rapport with your students, a simple way to do so is use fidgets in your therapy space alongside the students.
When I included myself in the “community” of people that can have access to the fidgets, the students’ reactions were different. By acknowledging that I find fidgets useful as well, and that there was no shame or judgment in using fidgets, I was able to level the playing field. My students were more receptive to using the fidgets as tools themselves as well as took them more seriously.
Students benefit from seeing the adult in the room also using a fidget. Not just them. And this can be instrumental in building rapport. Using fidgets yourself is a very simple way to connect with your students. You’re showing the students that accommodating their body needs for movement isn’t shameful, it’s normal.
Normalizing fidget use decreases the stigma; you are showing your students that everyone fidgets, not just them.
When you too use fidget tools when working with students, they are seeing appropriate fidget use modeled in front of them. You are demonstrating that there are ways you can satisfy your body’s need for movement while also not becoming disruptive or a distraction to others. Modeling using fidgets as tools not toys encourages the students to also treat them as such.
4. Having fidgets can create natural social opportunities.
Community fidgets became a natural way for students in a group to initiate communication with each other without any adult assistance or direction.
The biggest surprise I noticed when implementing community fidgets, were that my students in groups would often switch fidget tools with one another during the session without any disruption to the lesson. Students who rarely spoke to one another on their own initiated asking to trade or share or for a turn and there were no arguments or drama to be found.
One of my students who regularly used to tease other students was suddenly showing kindness and understanding about fidgets to their peers they had previously teased. This was huge progress.
Why the change? I think that creating an environment where fidgets were normalized also encouraged the students to better understand that accommodating for differences is just what we do. Different needs were destigmatized because community fidgets were simply always available and after introduction didn’t need to be specially addressed.
5. Certain fidgets work better for certain students.
Not all students are going to benefit from the same fidgets. Having a variety of fidgets, especially fidgets that addressed different sensory needs, was huge in the success of implementing the community fidget box.
Some students benefit more from tactile fidgets, some from visual, some from auditory. Each person has different needs and so it is beneficial to have a variety of fidgets available to serve these different purposes.
Fidget cubes can be good for tactile as well as auditory stimulation. Stretchy string or squeeze balls can provide tactile stimulation. Balls with glitter inside or liquid motion timers can provide visual stimulation. Exercise balls or balance boards engage more gross motor skills, while clicking a silent button engages more fine motor skills. Fidget chew tools or “chewelry” engages the mouth/teeth.
Not all of these options are practical or feasible for our therapy spaces, but it is still important to consider different types of fidgets and what needs they are addressing. Consider whether the fidgets you have are meeting the sensory needs of the students who enter the therapy space.
How I introduced the community fidget box.
All in all, I saw huge benefit from implementing access to community fidgets into my therapy spaces. So now that we have our why for fidgets, I’ll elaborate a little on how I did it.
In the introductory period, it helped to establish rules and boundaries around the fidgets. I started by speaking clearly on the purpose of the community fidgets. Why they were there.
I explained the fidgets were tools to help them pay attention. This was their purpose. Sometimes our bodies need help with directing our focus. Using a fidget was that help. A good fidget tool will give your body something to occupy itself with so that it’s easier for you to follow along with the lesson or activities.
The fidget tools were not meant to be toys that take our focus away from the activity. If a fidget tool is more distracting and takes away your focus, then it is not serving you or us.
Once the expectations were set, boundaries were important to cover. To reinforce the fidgets were not toys but tools.
If the fidget became more of a distraction, I would need to remove them for the rest of the session. (Not forever, just that session.) It was the students’ responsibility to use them smartly to help them or we would not use them at all. Consequences are still important and this doesn’t need to be framed as a “punishment” for “bad behavior.”
It’s as simple as this: if the fidgets are helping our focus for the day, we use them, and if the fidgets are disrupting our focus for the day, we won’t use them. Accommodations are meant to be helpful. So if our current accommodations are not being helpful, then we want to explore other ways to address our needs.
I also explained the fidgets were to be shared, did not belong to any one student, and they were not to leave the therapy space. If the student wanted a particular fidget during the session, they could quietly ask another for a turn. If the fidgets became an argument, they would not be helping and we could either remove the fidget that is causing disruption or brainstorm compromises for taking turns so that we could still use the fidgets without them becoming a source of distraction.
I think setting the stage for normalizing use of fidget tools helped the students allow themselves to access the fidgets even if they were shy. They didn’t need to speak up and ask permission to use the fidgets, they could wordlessly take one from the box, simple as that. Small steps in building self-advocacy skills in students that may be afraid to speak up or acknowledge their needs to others.
Fidgets in teletherapy? Future aspirations
Now that I work in the virtual space as an SLP doing teletherapy, this was the first year that I’ve gone since starting my SLP career without having a community fidget box. And reflecting on my experiences and the benefits of using one has convinced me that I want to find a way to implement a community fidget box from afar, even if I have to spend my own money to provide one. (Not suggesting everyone needs to spend their own money on fidgets, I’ve just found the results worth the investment. In an ideal world, the schools would provide the fidgets…)
I’ve found that in virtual therapy, my more fidgety students would distract themselves by changing the background of their screen, turning the camera or microphone one and off, selecting emojis to send in the chat or as a reaction and raising their hand. And that’s only what I could see. In my opinion, most of these are more distracting than a student having a fidget cube in their hands.
I have the power to proactively respect and supply this simple thing that meets these students’ needs. So this upcoming school year, I plan to purchase some fidgets and educate my instructional assistant to put together a community fidget box. I’m interested to see what more I can learn from that experiment.
If you have a community fidget tool box or offer fidgets in sessions, feel free to share your own experiences below. I like to hear what others have learned that I can benefit from as well.
Alternatively, if you found value in this post, please let me know by commenting below.