It's a tradition for grandparents and parents to tell kids how difficult it was getting to school in their day. But when it comes to hauling overstuffed bags to and from school, kids today may have it tougher than you did.
"It's a universal problem," says Karen Jacobs, a Boston University professor and the former president of the American Occupational Therapy Association. Some children come home each afternoon rubbing their shoulders, she says, and others are complaining of headaches from the strain of lugging their books and school supplies. Your grandchildren's backpacks should weigh no more than 10 to 15 percent of their body weight, Jacobs says, but if a child who weighs 100 pounds carries a 25-pound bag, which is not unusual, that would be 25 percent of his or her body weight.
Why are bags so heavy?
What makes up the 25 pounds (or more)? The daily stuffing includes gadgets like iPods and cell phones; bulky student planners, notebooks, and folders; and pencil cases packed with dozens of pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, glue sticks, erasers, and perhaps even mini-staplers. There could also be a sweatshirt, house keys, a bottle of water, and a bag lunch or lunchbox. For kids heading to gym class or athletic practice, add a change of clothes and maybe a pair of sneakers.
That's all before you include textbooks.
Beth Feldman, 66, and her husband, Sidney, 67, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., agree that heavy textbooks are a problem for their three grandchildren, who are in grades six, ten, and twelve. But thinking back to when her children were young, Beth Feldman says, "books were always heavy, books were always big."
True, but "without a doubt, they've gotten larger," says Jay Diskey, executive director for the school division of the Association of American Publishers. Since the mid-1990s, when most states passed demanding new curriculum standards, he says, the average size of textbooks has increased by 20 to 30 percent.
Parents often ask textbook publishers, "When will all this be electronic?" Diskey says. But while many publishers are moving in that direction, "the textbook will never really go away," he says. Schools today want what he calls "a convergence of print and digital" — printed textbooks packaged with a companion CD-ROM or website. Electronic delivery, however, has its limits. "Not all students have access to a computer," Diskey says, and many students who have computers do not want to read an entire textbook on a screen.
Is it their own fault?
Textbooks aren't the sole culprit in overweight backpacks. Jacobs says too many kids treat their backpacks as "portable life-support systems." There are good reasons to pack water bottles, but some common-sense guidelines would lighten kids' loads, such as carrying reusable empty bottles to fill up at school water fountains.
Students also need to be educated about the proper way to pack a backpack — by placing the heaviest items closest to their backs, and distributing the rest of the contents as evenly as possible, for example They also need to wear it correctly — by always using both shoulder straps (and keeping them pulled tight), and employing waist and chest straps as well. Kids should also periodically clear out their packs, so they can stop carrying around the forgotten paperback they started carrying in September, or recycle the dozens of outdated spelling quizzes.
Which bags are best?
Grandparents can help by making sure that children are using the right backpacks in the first place, and if they're not, making sure they get better ones. A good backpack should fit the child, have thickly-padded shoulder straps, and chest and hip straps for extra support. Unfortunately, the most ergonomically-designed backpacks aren't necessarily the most popular with schoolchildren.
Adults seek out safety and durability, says John Bartholomew, a product-line manager at L.L. Bean, but "kids choose a pack for two primary reasons: how it looks and capacity." Finding a backpack that satisfies both adult and child criteria can be tricky, Bartholomew says, because children's choice of backpack is one of the ways they tell the world who they are: "If they've chosen a particular color, if they've chosen a particular print, it means something to them." But you can help steer them toward a better selection by doing a bit of preshopping to find an outlet that carries a wide selection of well-constructed packs that also appeal to kids’ tastes.
Maria Zachmanoglou, 78, a grandmother of two and a school psychologist in New York City, has granddaughters in the fourth and sixth grades who enjoy decorating their backpacks with key chains and other charm attachments like a ballet slipper; a ball surrounded by bees; and a ninja voodoo doll. The girls' level of care not only about what goes in their bags but what dangles outside them as well is a sign of how much has changed since Zachmanoglou’s children attended school in the 1960s and 1970s. "They didn’t even use backpacks," she laughs. "They just carried the books in their hands."
Find advice on packing and wearing backpacks safely from the American Association of Occupational Therapists and the American Physical Therapy Association. Elsewhere on Grandparents.com, discover our guide to your grandchildren's education, find tips for doing yoga with your grandchildren, learn how to handle your grandchildren's worst habits, and find surprising suggestions about what young children need to become brilliant.
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