Mom topics Two NYC schools ban 'Rainbow bracelets' because of distraction 
 
 Oct. 26, 2013 at 11:56 AM ET 
 
 Etsy 
 
 When kids really like a toy, it can take over the playground and cause such a distraction that schools feel the need to prohibit it. It’s happened in the past with Pokeman cards. And Silly Bandz. 
 
 The latest schoolyard craze causing a ruckus is the Rainbow Loom, which involves a crochet hook and multicolored rubber bands, and results in colorful bracelets that are the passion of elementary school girls and boys everywhere. Two New York City schools, however, feel the passion may be poisoning recess and classroom time. 
 
 In one Upper West side school, P.S. 87, anything related to Rainbow Looms is considered contraband, while in Brooklyn’s P.S. 107, students are still allowed to wear the bracelets, but they are no longer allowed to bring the “looms” and “related paraphernalia” to school. 
 
 Some parents are scratching their heads over the decision to ban what they see as a highly creative outlet for kids. In a world where arts education budgets can be strapped, prohibiting an artistic recess activity can seem counterintuitive. 
 
 The Rainbow Loom also defies stereotypical gender norms, as boys and girls are similarly obsessed with making, trading and giving the bracelets to their friends. In a story for Time magazine, Annie Murphy Paul expressed surprise when her 7-year old son, who normally plays football and baseball, asked for a kit and embraced “the distinctly feminine activity of making jewelry.” Murphy argues that the Rainbow Loom is more than a toy — it's hope for gender equality. 
 
 “I think it’s a complete overreaction on the part of the administration,” says one P.S. 87 mom who asked to remain anonymous. Rainbow bracelets are an inexpensive and creative source of pride for the students who also use the trend to build community as they collaborate on pretty intricate designs, she says. 
 
 At the same time, other parents applaud the schools for taking action. They believe that the rainbow looms were disruptive to the classroom environment and created a divide between those who have the looms and those who do not. 
 
 Assistant Principal, Suzan Federici, notified P.S. 87 parents on Oct. 15 that the Rainbow Loom bracelets and bracelet-making kits were starting to “get out of hand.” According to Federici’s letter, the bracelets were causing conflict among students during recess and children were no longer allowed to bring any bracelets or bracelet kits to school. 
 
 Eve Litwack, principal of Park Slope P.S. 107, declined to comment on the matter, but corrected previous reports that said she called the bracelets, “addictive.” She said she did not. 
 
 As reported by DNA Info New York, Litwack said the problem was that some students started showing up for “morning line-up toting Ziploc bags stuffed with thousands of rubber bands and tackle boxes of the bracelet equipment.” 
 
 "When a teacher says it's interfering with what she can do in the classroom, it's just not healthy," Litwack said. 
 
 “It’s hard enough to control a class of 9-year-olds as it is,” says Gerald Stinner, a Park Slope father who agrees the toy should be banned. Stinner says his fourth-grade daughter is “kind of obsessed with the rainbow bracelets” and thinks it’s something she can do on her own time at home. 
 
 Rebecca Hughes Parker, a parent of twin fourth-grade girls who attend P.S. 87, defends her school’s bracelet ban as well. There are a thousand kids in the school and parents have to trust the people who are there with the students every day to make the best determination for the community as a whole, Parker says. 
 
 It doesn’t appear that many other cities are taking New York’s lead yet. 
 
 Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a Monclova, Ohio, parent, recalls how her daughter’s Allentown, Pa., school did participate in a multi-state ban on Silly Bandz bracelets in 2010. “As far as I know, the (Rainbow) bracelets aren’t banned in our schools at the moment,” says Guzzo. “But I don’t think most teachers permit the student to bring the loom and a gazillion bracelets into class, although they can wear them.” 
 
 “I think it’s nice when they have indoor recess on rainy days and people bring in the bands and looms,” says Angela Rella, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y. mother of a third-grade girl and a kindergarten-aged boy, who both love the toy. 
 
 While Rella says there is no ban on bracelets, on Friday her daughter Lucia came home with a message from her teacher. Kids are now only allowed to wear one bracelet to school. In an email to TODAY Moms, Rella explained why the new rule was in place: "The boys were wearing them all the way up to the elbow and [the teacher] was worried it would cut off circulation." 
 
 Jacoba Urist is a business, health and lifestyle reporter in New York City. Follow her on Twitter@JacobaUrist. 
 
 
 
 ||||| Friendship bracelets? Silly Bandz? Those are SO yesterday. 
 
 This year's hot trend with the elementary school set is Rainbow Loom bracelets. But you probably already know this if you have a young girl or boy in the house, or know a young girl or boy, or ever see a young girl or boy anywhere. The bouncy little bracelets are ubiquitous. 
 
 "My son will spend a week making one. He'll work on it before school, and he'll come home sometimes and that's all he does. All the kids are doing it," says Middleburg Heights mother of four Jenine Black of her 8-year-old, Wyatt. Her 6-year-old daughter also makes the bracelets and her 10-year old son wears them, too. 
 
 Adds Parma mother of three Leeann Hochevar of her 8-year-old, Cecilia, "All of the girls my daughter knows are into it. They go their friends' houses and that's what they do." 
 
 "That" refers to using a plastic loom, about 2-by-8-inches, to create intricately patterned colorful bracelets by weaving tiny rubber bands in a variety of patterns. These range from simple fishtail patterns that can be done by younger children in less than 30 minutes to a complex flag pattern that might take tweens a week. 
 
 These bracelets are everywhere – except on enough store shelves. Shortages have parents across the nation in search of the tiny rubber bands (sold separately) and plastic looms that enable their young ones to make wearable art in patterns such as "Hexafish" and "Starburst" – many of which they learn from thousands of YouTube.com videos devoted to Rainbow Loom bracelets. 
 
 "You hunt high and low for the bands and the looms, and everybody is always sold out. You feel like a crazy person," laughs Black. 
 
 Black got one of her kits on a trip to South Haven, Mich. The other she found at a Michael's location. She also says Learning Express Toys at Southpark Mall in Strongsville has a big supply (at the moment). Other readers noted that many area Walgreens are currently stocking the bands, but not the kits. I found a kit a the Toys-R-Us Parma location, which had a small, but quickly diminishing, pile. You can also find bands at locally owned Nicky Nicole stores in Westlake, Woodmere and Hudson, as well as online at nickynicole.com. 
 
 The trend seems to have hit the area in the summer and quickly picked up when kids went back to school. Credit Michigan father/inventor Cheong-Choon Ng for the hundreds of little bands clogging up your vacuum cleaner. 
 
 Ng made his first loom with his daughter about three years ago, using push pins – just to make crafts at home. But the family project led to some homemade YouTube videos, and interest exploded. 
 
 Today, Ng has sold more than 1 million kits – and there are many similar competitors. His Rainbow Loom YouTube channel has more than 66 videos and close to 4 million views. There are thousands of homemade videos from kids across the world on YouTube, too. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Hochevar says her daughter got into the bracelets when school started in the late summer. Black says the same thing - but with a twist. 
 
 She first bought a loom for her first-grade daughter, but her 8-year-old son soon became more interested when he saw both male and female classmates making them. 
 
 "You wouldn't think an 8-year-old boy would be really into making bracelets, but they all are," says Black. "My son is making the American Flag design right now. He and his classmates say it's the ultimate. It could take a week." 
 
 "I like that there are so many things you can make with them," says Wyatt Black of the bracelet's appeal. "The flag is really hard, but it's fun. My friends say my bracelets are really cool." 
 
 Black says the bracelets are a project of which she approves. 
 
 "I'm all for it because they're taking the time and making it. He's really proud of it when he makes something complicated, and he'll take it to school and show his friends. It's better than Silly Bandz." 
 
 Still, Parma mom Hochevar is holding off on getting too excited about the bracelets. 
 
 "I spent way too much money on the Silly Bandz craze," she says. "I still have packets of them laying around here." 
 
 For now, her daughter makes them with friends, but does not have her own loom – which is on her Christmas wish list. 
 
 Her school, St. Columbkille in Parma, does not allow students to wear the bracelets. Many area private schools have the same rule. Most area public schools, such as the Berea schools that Black's children attend, do allow them. But schools in some other states have started banning the wearing and trading of Rainbow Loom bracelets during school hours. As one principal in Brooklyn, N.Y. said, the bracelets are addictive. 
 
 You can say that again. 
 
 
 
 Share photos of your rainbow loom bracelets with us at photos.cleveland.com/photogallery/index.html, email them to sendphoto@cleveland.com or post them to Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #CLEbracelets. ||||| Courtesy of Rainbow Loom Rainbow Loom bracelets 
 
 The other day, my seven-year-old son asked me for a Rainbow Loom. If you don’t know what that is, you don’t have children under age twelve. The Rainbow Loom is the toy of the season, a contraption for making the woven rubber bracelets that rise in stacks around grade school kids’ arms as they incessantly make them, trade them, and give them to their friends. The Rainbow Loom craze began in the summer, and unlike other fads, it has not yet abated, despite the decision of two public elementary schools in New York City to ban them. 
 
 When I expressed surprise at my son’s request—my son’s interests usually run more toward baseball and football—he was nonchalant. “All the boys in my class have one,” he said, and even accounting for kids’ invariably-inflated claims about what “all” their classmates have, since our conversation I have noticed that this is one toy that does seem genuinely gender-neutral. 
 
 There was nine-year-old son of a friend, for example, who told his mother that “no one talks anymore about Minecraft”—the hugely popular online building game—because they’re too busy talking about hexafishes and zippy chains, two of the more complicated Rainbow Loom bracelet designs (there are an infinite number, he recommends Ashley on YouTube’s demonstration.) And there was the friend who posted on Facebook about her tween son’s response when she gently teased him about giving a bracelet to a female classmate. “Mom, it’s not love, it’s just Rainbow Loom,” he said with an eye roll. 
 
 If boys are indeed embracing the distinctly feminine activity of making jewelry, it’s big news, and not just for the bottom line of toy stores across the country. Toy choice is the single most sex-typed behavior that children display. As neuroscientist Lise Eliot notes in her book Pink Brain, Blue Brain: “There’s a good reason why parents so often comment on boys’ and girls’ different toy preferences: this is one of the largest differences between the sexes that psychologists have uncovered.” In one study from Sweden, Eliot writes, “97 percent of boys were likelier to spend their time playing with toy vehicles, balls, and weapons than the average girl, when given a choice between those or stereotypical feminine toys. This difference is much, much larger than any of the cognitive or personality differences between the sexes.” 
 
 (MORE: School Has Become Too Hostile for Boys) 
 
 What’s delighting a certain set of parents about boys’ affinity for Rainbow Loom is that it requires quiet concentration and fine motor skills to string tiny rubber bands onto a loom and then essentially crochet them with an equally diminuative hook. The overwhelming preference of boys for things they can throw or smash, and of girls for things they craft or groom, is “fascinating, but also misleading,” Lise Eliot points out. Parents and teachers often point to play behavior as a representative difference between the sexes—“See, boys and girls are different, and there’s not much we can do about it”—when really play behavior is an outlier. In every other way, girls and boys are much more similar to each other. 
 
 In her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter, cultural critic Peggy Orenstein elaborates on this point: “Toy choice turns out to be one of the largest differences between the sexes over the entire life span, bigger than anything except the preference (among most of us) for the other sex as romantic partners. But its timing and intensity shore up every assumption and stereotype we adults hold: little boys naturally like backhoes, ergo men won’t ask for directions. That blinds us to the larger truth of how deeply those inborn biases are reinforced by a child’s environment.” 
 
 So if even “one of the largest differences between the sexes that psychologists have uncovered” is now yielding to the call of the Rainbow Loom, perhaps it’s a sign that there may be hope for gender equality yet. 
 
 (MORE: Keeping Teens ‘Private’ on Facebook Won’t Protect Them)
– It's apparently not too early to anoint this year's hot holiday toy, one that is surprisingly old school: the Rainbow Loom. And as Annie Murphy Paul writes at Time, "If you don't know what that is, you don't have children under age twelve." For those in the dark, the contraption helps kids create intricate rubber band bracelets, usually dispensed to friends. The craze got its start in the summer but intensified with the return to school, writes Laura DeMarco at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And, crucially, boys are on board. In fact, Time's Murphy Paul finds this the most interesting part of the trend, given the entrenched gender roles in the toy biz. Parents seem to love the looms because they don't involve staring at a screen and theoretically build kids' motor skills and social ones, too. (Thanks to all the bracelet exchanging going on.) Plus, starter kits don't break the bank at about $17—assuming you can find one on store shelves. "The last time parents were this hot and heavy over a toy, it was Beanie Babies," a toy store owner tells the Chicago Tribune. And the obligatory Beanie Babies comparison isn't the only milestone for the looms: Two schools in New York City have banned them because they were deemed too distracting, notes Today.com. (In other toy news, click to read about how Legos are angrier these days.)