The use of fidget spinners has easily become an obsession for people of all ages. However, the craze started to become a point of controversy after a social media post about a 10-year-old girl from Houston, Texas who accidentally swallowed a part of the popular stress-reliever toy.

Small but dangerous

Kelly Rose Joniec, the mother of the victim, warns other parents regarding the use of fidget spinners by sharing on Facebook the incident that happened to her daughter. According to Joniec’s post, she was in the car with her daughter, Britton Joniec, on their way home one Saturday afternoon.

All of a sudden, she heard her 10-year-old daughter making odd noises at the back seat.

“Looking back in the mirror, I saw her face turning red and drool pouring from her mouth – she could utter noises but looked panicked, so I immediately pulled over,” the mother said. The child pointed to her throat and told her mom that she swallowed something. Joniec quickly pulled the child over the back seat and there she discovered that her daughter was already choking from one of the bearings of her fidget spinner.

Joniec tried to remove the small piece of metal inside her daughter’s throat through all means available. She took a Heimlich maneuver to extricate the fidget spinner part and stop Britton from choking, but she failed to remove the same.

Joniec hurriedly brought the child to the nearest health care center along the area.

At first, the attending doctors were not able to reveal the exact location where the fidget spinner part got stuck. However, after an X-ray was conducted at the Texas Children’s Hospital, the doctors had found out that the round metal bearing from the toy was stuck in Britton’s esophagus and after that, removed the same.

“‘Fortunately, we had a positive outcome, but it was pretty scary there for a while,” Joniec said. According to the lawyer of the family, Britton was already discharged from the hospital and is currently recovering from the incident. Joniec’s post on the social networking site has already been shared more than 677,000 times and has earned almost 70,000 comments from different Facebook users.

The spinner craze

Fidget spinners have been circulating elsewhere in the world for many years now. Before, it was commonly used as therapy for children with autism and attention disorders as fidget spinners are believed to help them build and improve their concentration skills.

However, come spring this year, the popularity of fidget spinners has boomed, making it one of the most addictive games and hobbies for people of all sorts. Toy stores confirm that the demand for fidget spinners these past few months has actually reached its highest to the extent that stores find it hard to keep them in stock.

Just recently, several schools in America banned the use of fidget spinners as the toy became a sort of distraction to students, especially to kids. On the other hand, other parents raise objection towards the use of the toy claiming that the use of fidget spinners turn their children into ‘morons.'