Brooklyn School Bans 'Addictive' Rainbow Loom Bracelet Kits

The principal of a Park Slope, Brooklyn, elementary school is taking down the latest threat to kids' learning: Rainbow Loom bracelet-making kits.

The Facey Family/flickr

The bracelets -- bright and colorful rubber bands that kids string together, much like the classic friendship bracelet -- are popular among young girls and boys. Apparently, too popular.

"It's an addiction," said Eve Litwack, principal of Park Slope's P.S. 107, to DNAinfo New York. "It was like the kids couldn't live without it. It was just getting to the point where it was really crazy."

The Huffington Post reported:

Administrators at P.S. 107 said that loom band mania was getting in the way of learning. Litwack explained that kids were weaving bracelets when teachers' backs were turned. She also said that some kids teased others for not having kits of their own.

Litwack also expressed concern that kids chose to spend their recess time weaving the bracelets rather than running around on the field.

The Department of Education told The New York Post that the agency has not issued a ban on Rainbow Loom bracelets, since these types of decisions are left up to the discretion of individual schools. However, Park Slope's P.S. 107 is not alone. Earlier this month, the principal of an elementary school in Manhattan's Upper West Side also banished the jewelry-making fad. This school, P.S. 87, took the ban a step further, prohibiting the bracelets as well as the kits, because their mere presence fostered worrisome tensions between the "haves and have nots". 

The official ban notice sent to parents read:

The children are playing with the bracelets during class without permission from teachers. [They] are playing with them at recess, and it is causing conflict between children. Therefore, starting immediately, your children are no longer allowed to bring any Rainbow Loom bracelets or the kits to school.

Some parents have expressed their frustration. "This is ridiculous. There is nothing illicit about Rainbow Looms," one P.S. 87 parent said. The founder of DivaMoms.com appeared on Fox News to discuss the issue, saying, "If [teachers] feel it's distracting, maybe the teacher at the beginning of the day should set a reminder. Set the rules."

Rainbow Loom bracelets now join a rich history of seemingly harmless but trendy toys banned from school grounds, including: Silly Bandz, Slap-Bracelets, and Pokémon cards. 

Comments

[Paul.]

We're Europe. We're a permission-based society. Yes, Gays, now you may fall in love with someone.

[jesse.in.mb]

Ugh, bracelet weaving is a gateway hobby. In the '80s I learned how to make lanyards. It started with a square weave, but eventually we learned the twist. Before you knew it I was prostituting myself just to afford my latch-hook rug making addiction.

It was a shameful time in my life. I would forget to eat, I never slept when I graduated to knitting suddenly everything had to be covered in a knit koozies.

BAN CRAFT HOBBIES FOR THE CHILDREN, AMERICA, FOR. THE. CHILDREN.

[Hugh Akston]

Jesse is the only whore I knew that would say "no glove, no love" and then actually crochet a pair of mittens for the john.

[Paul.]

Ugh, bracelet weaving is a gateway hobby. In the '80s I learned how to make lanyards

Were you a khaki scout?

[Lady Bertrum]

But did you macrame yourself a pair of Jean shorts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9uBvoYLvYE

[sloopyinca]

Before you knew it I was prostituting myself just to afford my latch-hook rug making addiction.

Why do I so readily accept this as the gospel truth?

[jesse.in.mb]

Because I've been both people? It's just my slutty phase and my learned-to-knit, made-a-latch-hook-rug phase had a good 13 years between them.

[sloopyinca]

Because I've been both people? It's just my slutty phase and my learned-to-knit, made-a-latch-hook-rug phase had a good 13 years of overlap between them.

FIFY, I think.

[jesse.in.mb]

How does one accomplish slutty while being in a made-a-latch-hook-rug phase?

[sloopyinca]

If you have to ask then you don't want to know.

[Hugh Akston]

Do you really need both hands to be a slut?

[sloopyinca]

Exactly. Look, Ma. No hands!

[playa manhattan]

How long were you hanging on to that little gem?

[Episiarch]

Children...engaging in fads?!? It must be stopped...for the children!

[PapayaSF]

And being obsessive about something they like! That's never happened before!

[Mint Berry Crunch]

I already made like infiniti of those at camp.

[Loki]

Your mom went to college!

[Some call me Tim?]

I see you're drinking 1%, is that because you think you're fat?

[CharlesWT]

God forbid that school, even for sightless moment, be fun.

[Pathogen]

Absolutely, and to think that 'Childrunz" might actually seek an escape from the tedious and inane horseshit that passes for curriculum, they are kids after all. This bureaucrat is compelled to stomp out any source of expression, imagination, individuality, or aspiration, anything beyond warming a seat so the school can retain its matching funds gravy train. Let's face it, these kids are pretty well fucked anyway, as soon as they graduate school, so might as well get on with it, crush their spirits now, so that the day to day tedium and skullduggery of their squandered future isn't so absolutely devastating, when they are old enough to realize they've been had... they'll be nothing but numb callus.

[Hugh Akston]

So basically anything we don't approve of is an addiction now?

[Paul.]

Well, yeah. I guess you didn't get the modern government memo.

[Hugh Akston]

I keep not getting these fucking things. I thought the NSA had ready access to my inbox.

[jesse.in.mb]

Now? My mother used to say I was addicted to reading. She'd actually go on tirades about how it was a manifestation of my "addictive personality disorder"* and then I'd get grounded for months at a time from reading anything not explicitly school related.

*Dear parents of the world, please don't dress up your crazy in psuedo-scientific terms, it's an ugly thing.

[Suthenboy]

Christ jessie, that is terrible. Any kid that wants to read should have access to....everything.

I read the encyclopedia brittanica by the time I was out of Jr. high. We lived in the middle of nowhere and that was really all that was available to me.

In the summers when my brother and I would visit my father I would spend every minute I could in bookstores. To this day I get a boner from the smell of a bookstore.

[sloopyinca]

So you're like White Goodman?

[Suthenboy]

Yep, codpiece and all.

[sloopyinca]

Paging Barfman. Barfman to the white courtesy phone, please.

[Max Power]

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood. Nobody!

[Ted S.]

I read the encyclopedia brittanica by the time I was out of Jr. high. We lived in the middle of nowhere and that was really all that was available to me.

I'm roughly the same, except that I only had a set of the World Book Encyclopedia.

That, and 20 years of old Reader's Digests that my grandparents had given to my parents. No wonder I'm so fucking warped. 🙂

[Lady Bertrum]

My step-sister and I got in trouble with our parents for being indoors and reading too much as teens, so we took to hanging out in the park with boys and smoking weed. I guess we showed them. 😉

[Suthenboy]

What the hell? You too? My parents encouraged me.

What parent would discourage their child from reading?

[Lady Bertrum]

The kind that finds it inconvenient their kid is hanging around the house all day reading when the parent rather they just weren't there.

Truth be told, we weren't reading War and Peace, more like Black Stallion and Trixie Belden novels.

[JW]

The she-spawn spends most of her waking hours on her computer, chatting, drawing and hanging out on Tumblr. She doesn't really have any interest in socializing beyond what she's doing online and zero interest in the outdoors.

This drives the wife-unit nuts, who is always yelling at her to go outside or do something else. I don't disagree, but I'm not going to force the issue. All in all, she's bright and become a fairly balanced kid, after years of tormenting us, and I know her limits (which I do get her to push).

"Why?" I ask. "We know where she is, we know what she's doing and she's not out drinking, doing drugs, getting killed in a car accident with a drunk friend or getting knocked up. Where's the problem here?"

[sarcasmic]

What parent would discourage their child from reading?

A parent who wants their child to be active and fit in body, but not mind.

[gaoxiaen]

You should be out taking drugs like all the other kids.

[JW]

*Dear parents mothers of the world, please don't dress up your crazy in psuedo-scientific terms, it's an ugly thing.

Fixed.

[Episiarch]

No, anything some mendacious scum doesn't approve of is called by the hyperbolic term "addiction" to imply that the people who like it aren't in control of themselves...and therefore need to be controlled.

[sloopyinca]

Everyone here knows you're addicted to Warty.

[Hugh Akston]

Epi wishes he knew how to quit Warty.

[jesse.in.mb]

The acute Stockholm syndrome prevents him from ever wishing for that, Hugh.

[Lady Bertrum]

Ewwwwww! Now I've got a mental picture of the guy in leather with the ball in his mouth from Pulp Fiction. Zed? Zeb?

[sloopyinca]

Zed. And he's dead, baby. He's dead.

[Hugh Akston]

Zed's dead baby. Zed's dead.

[Lady Bertrum]

Right. Then she forgot the ass-watch.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

If the watch was so damned important why didn't he just toss it in his gym bag before leaving for the fight?

He knew what a ditz his girlfriend was.

[Troy muy grande boner]

Epi plays the gimp

[Swamp Think]

This is building up to something which can only be cleansed with fire.

[Suthenboy]

I fear you are correct. I had four conversations with strangers this week where they said the end is nigh.

John McCain was lectured by a guy at a town hall meeting and told that it was time for the political class to be charged with treason and the crowd wend wild with cheers. I see dark days ahead.

[sloopyinca]

I wouldn't call that "dark days". Hell, I'll probably be popping bottles of champagne open if that starts happening.

[Ted S.]

Only if it's both halves of TEAM BE RULED.

[Episiarch]

That sounds pretty awesome to me.

[Swamp Think]

I was talking with a guy from Bulgaria today, asked him if he was there for the revolution. He smiled and said, "Well, it was a soft revolution." I said, "Hey, that's the best kind. Just run the bastards out of town on a rail."

[Ted S.]

20+ years on, though, and they're having pretty serious protests again.

[VG Zaytsev]

John McCain was lectured by a guy at a town hall meeting and told that it was time for the political class to be charged with treason and the crowd wend wild with cheers.

What did the crypt keeper say after that?

[sloopyinca]

P.S. 107
P.S. 87

Are New Yorkers so fucking lazy that they can't even come up with names for their fucking schools? Here's a tip, dickheads. Large cities are still able to name their schools. You're just too fucking sorry to put forth the effort.

[CharlesWT]

Naming a Public School in New York? It Isn't as Simple as 1, 2, 3

[sloopyinca]

Thank you for helping make my point. Those hipster faggots name their schools with numbers to be ironic...or maybe because their city lacks any qualities that can be used to give schools meaningful and somewhat unique names.

Fuck New York City. Fuck them in the ear.

[SIV]

Was that to fool the white parents during forced busing? "Your child is hereby transferred to PS whatever" might have gone over better than Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman or George Washington Carver Elementary.

[Robert]

Indianapolis numbered them too, last I knew.

[The Last American Hero]

We have to get this far down before someone cracks a Rainbow Loom Parties joke? Seriously off your game today guys (and gal).

[jorgeborges]

I was the first kid to have a mechanical pencil in 2nd or 3rd grade. The teacher made me stop bringing it to school after about a week. What a bitch.

[Lady Bertrum]

Show-off.

[CharlesWT]

I wonder if any kid ever lugged his Electric Pencil to school?

[paranoid android]

Rainbow Loom bracelets now join a rich history of seemingly harmless but trendy toys banned from school grounds, including: Silly Bandz, Slap-Bracelets, and Pok?mon cards.

Don't forget Pogs. I was a fourth grader in Southern California when the whole panic over Pogs happened. I may someday note it as a seminal point in my path to libertarianism--I kind of remember the whole episode being my introduction to the concept that sometimes the people who claim to be looking out for you and say they know what's best for you are just stupid assholes who don't know anything.

[sloopyinca]

I got a Noonion Soong Limited Edition Pog card in the Action Figure that came in the mail late last week.

Jealous?

[Loki]

We can only hope that these kids learn the same lesson. It would be ironic if they end up creating a generation of uber-libertarians because of stupid shit like this.

[CharlesWT]

When I was in grade school, our preoccupations were fireworks, cap guns, tops and marbles. ({:}~

[Thane of Steelport]

Down with Pogs, up with Crazy Bones

[playa manhattan]

GARBAGE PAIL KIDS!

[Max Power]

I remember when slap bracelets got banned when I was in elementary school. I think they said the fabric covering could rip and then the metal thing inside could cut your wrist and kill you or some stupid shit.

[Some call me Tim?]

I vividly remember that. The local news had a desperate case of the vapors.

I recall on particular segment that involved then taking the fabric off and cutting an apple with the metal.

[Max Power]

Yeah I remember them being really up in arms at my central PA school. I just googled to see if I could find anyone ever actually being hurt, but I couldn't. I did find this news article:
http://news.google.com/newspap.....65,4542595

It's funny because you could probably substitute anything that people wanted to ban and put it in the paper now and no one would know the difference.

[playa manhattan]

How old are you two weirdoes?

[Max Power]

I'm 32. So that news article from 1990 would have been right at the height of the slap bracelet panic.

[playa manhattan]

I'm a year older than you, and I recall nothing of the sort.

[PM]

Shit, I'm 26 and even I remember the slap bracelet panic. I wasn't in school yet, but I remember when they went from ubiquity to nuclear weapons.

[JW]

I'm glad that I'm old enough that they hadn't thought up idiotic kiddie panics yet, when I was in school.

Well, other than the Gheys getting you in the boys room and THAT HAPPENED TO A FRIEND OF MINE. It's true!

[KDN]

Yeah, I'm 30 and I vividly remember that one too; they got banned right quick throughout NJ. Maybe it was an east coast thing?

[Generic Stranger]

Must be; I'm 27, and don't recall slap-bracelets ever being banned. I grew up in Nevada.

[Some call me Tim?]

31. I watched a lot of local news as a kid.

[Finrod]

Heck, I remember Rubik's Cubes being banned when I was in junior high.

[sarcasmic]

I remember in grade five or six we made water weenies with tubing from the store, a pen tip, and a rubber band to hold it in. We'd jam them into the water fountains to fill and slip them up our long sleeves. Then discretely send a squirt from the wrist like Spider Man. That was a fun year.

[playa manhattan]

You can't even buy that surgical tubing in pharmacies in CA anymore. I don't have the slightest idea why.

[SIV]

You have to be able to get it somewhere. For slingshots.

[tres]

Lowes has it. Needed some to make a water balloon launcher for my boy's birthday party (typical fucking rodeo).

[playa manhattan]

Father of the Year. I got a stern talking to for launching rockets with my 5 year old.

[Ted S.]

Used for making meth?

[PM]

Something about meth, I'm sure. That's why the rest of the formerly OTC products had to go behind the counter.

[PM]

Goddammit. That's what I get for not refreshing.

[plumbertom]

How does an Idiot that doesn't know the difference between an addiction and an obsession get put in charge of educating children?

[SIV]

We went through the same shit with toys when I was in school. Early/mid 70s Duncan Yo Yos come to mind. First they were confiscated, then banned. I'm sure there were more but my memory of anything involving public school is shot or repressed. I do recall everyone having those digital led watches in 8th grade that took both hands to tell the time (you had to reach over and touch the button)

[Some Chick from OH]

Clackers!

[SIV]

I remember those. You couldn't really play with them at school 'cause they were LOUD and really did shatter occasionally.

[Nooge.]

I wonder if any of those sniveling little turd bureaucrats, who are supposedly educated and credentialed to creatively work with children, had considered incorporating the bracelets into learning activities. Maybe as a reward for a good test grade. Maybe as an art project. Or perhaps into a geometry lesson, or a lesson about why colors look the way they do, or how rubber is made.

Nope. Fuck that shit. Fun is antithetical to learning. All great teachers know this.

Also, telling children "No" and "Because I fucking said so" is too pedestrian. Better come up with an important-sounding policy to hide official spinelessness.

[Some call me Tim?]

Well, they could do that, but only after making sure it fit into the Common Core curricula.

[JW]

Having dealt with many an education staff in the performing arts, I can tell you that we're doomed as a people, if they're representative of education in general. Those people are just fucking weird, besides just being useless, talking bags of shit.

[SIV]

Performing arts? Kids gotta learn how to make and operate giant anti-capitalist puppets somewhere.

[Ken Shultz]

Reason #172 to home school.

[mad libertarian guy]

If [teachers] feel it's distracting, maybe the teacher at the beginning of the day should set a reminder. Set the rules ought to learn how to fucking teach and keep her students' attention.

FIFY

Incentives. Fucking. Matter. Learn how to use them to your advantage. And stop fucking droning on in your mission to "create the citizens of tomorrow."

[MythicalLibertarianWoman]

Super late but I worked in a school last year and I'd forgotten about the silly Pokemon card ban from my days - I saw a few of the second grade boys had some and, feeling nostalgic, I was like, "Can I see your cards?" I thought they were going to cry. They begged and pleaded with me not to take their cards, "we'll put them away, I swear!" They about fell over when they realized that I seriously just wanted to see what cards they had, and wasn't planning on taking them.

[Swiss Servator, Climb Eiger!]

Oddish, FTW!

[Hopfiend]

You can't refine out the tendency of kids to tease others over some issue.

I was teased mercilessly because I didn't have more than one pair of parachute pants. I survived.

[Robert]

What could be said about these bracelets that couldn't be said about doodling?

[Kate6sorchensky]

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