I asked my kid if he wanted a fidget spinner. He gave me the look that is becoming his default response to a parent who is perpetually behind the trends.

“Too late. Already banned.”

Whoo, that was fast.

For those who may be even later to the game than I am on this one, fidget spinners are part of a larger class of fidget toys meant to help people with ADHD, ADD, autism or anxiety stay calm and focused when learning, working or waiting. Like to click your pen during a long meeting? Find yourself twirling your hair when reading a dense passage? Kind of like that. Keeping the hands occupied can help focus attention. It’s purposeful fidgeting.

A fidget spinner is about palm-sized and looks like a rounded three-blade fan. If you hold the middle between your thumb and index finger and give the blades a push, they will spin. Spinners usually cost $5-$10 in the store, but many enterprising kids have made their own with bearings and glue guns and other common items.

Fidget spinners rode a wave of enthusiasm into classrooms across the country fueled by teachers supportive of an adaptive toy that might help both special-needs and neurotypical children sit still and focus on lessons.

But then human nature kicked in. Moderation and self-control fell away.

The classroom bans have started.

Too distracting. Too competitive. Oh no, some of them now have flashing lights. It’s pau.

Remember kendamas, the low-tech wooden cup-and-ball game that every kid was nutty about three years ago? Even those had a longer classroom life than fidget spinners. It took at least half the school year before teachers were taping NO KEN­DAMA signs on their classroom doors.

Every generation has its faddish toy, immensely popular one minute, quickly overdone, then campus contraband. The Rubik’s Cube at least had some sheen of intellectual advancement going for it, as opposed to, say, Kabonkers, that barbaric toy of yesteryear that consisted of two glass orbs hanging from string — the object of which was to bounce the glass balls together. Bruises ensued. Kabonkers was an apt name.

You can make a very long list of fidget favorites, hits and misses through the years: rubber bands, pencil fight, cat’s cradle, cootie catchers, bubble wrapping, worry beads, marbles, jacks, poking a pencil through the hole in a ruler and spinning it like a propeller. Fidget spinners were intended to be more than a toy and actually part of a strategy, but then some kids just couldn’t contain themselves. (But what do you expect when middle school kids stop by Starbucks on their way to school and caffeine up with candy-flavored, sugar- packed coffee? How are they NOT going to fidget after that?)

But summer beckons, with sunlit romps and bike rides and beach days and a thousand ways to work off pent-up energy. That should take care of fidget spinner misuse, and by fall there could be some new fad to ban.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.