If you have school-age children, you will have checked by force of muscle that their backpacks many days weigh too much, especially in Primary. Some of us would have to visit the doctor for muscle overload, pulls or back pain after taking it for a few days in a row, like this, without heating up. To the notebooks, cases, books, lunch ... sometimes the Physical Education bags, the flute are added ... and let's not say if they also have to carry some material for an extracurricular that they carry out after classes at the same school.
So it is easy for the backpack to exceed five kilos. However, a child weighing 20 kilos should not carry a backpack that exceeds 3 kilos. Not even with 30 kilos you should reach 5 weight in the school bag. And most of our children are not yet in that body weight, however their backpacks do not adhere to that recommendation.
With this panorama and taking into account that these are not isolated cases, it is not surprising that back problems are increasingly common in children and that medical entities such as the Spanish Association of Pediatrics warn of the dangers of carrying too much School bags. It is also common for parents to be the ones who carry the backpacks when we can, with the consequent risk also to our health if we have more than one child.
Pediatricians recommend that The total weight of the backpack does not exceed 15% of the child's weight and preferably carry backpacks on your back (on both shoulders and with the weight well distributed). The carts with wheels can go well if the weight of the backpack is a lot and is not traveled by an irregular terrain.
What can be done to reduce the weight of school bags?
For avoid overloading school bags, many publishers already print their textbooks separated by quarters, insufficient measure (but preferable to take three in one throughout the course).
I wish the use of filing cabinets with plastic covers to extend the material from day to day instead of a large notebook for each subject was also extended.
Hopefully not so many duties were sent, so that books and notebooks could remain so quiet in the classrooms, without the need for so much transfer.
You could also have safe and accessible lockers for students, to store certain material (to do gymnastics, music, plastic ...).
Anyway, that there are different ways to lighten backpacks, it is said that wanting is power, but it would be necessary to be very much for the work and involve many changes and sometimes an investment in the schools that in the times that run does not seem very feasible. But surely we would save damage to muscles and joints and many back, neck, and shoulder pains ... caused by overweight in the backpack.
At the moment, they are measures that we cannot benefit from at home, so it's time to share the weight of the school bag as a good family and to cross their fingers so that one day they will be told that they can leave the books there. On excursion days, I think that part of the children's joy comes from not having to carry so much weight ...
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In Babies and more | Tips for carrying the school bag, How much should the school bag weigh? Do not overdo the weight: how to carry the school bag
