Why your child can (and should) bring his backpack to school

In a few days the new school year starts after two and a half months of holidays in which routines have been thrown into the air. It’s time to start all over again. The early mornings return, the morning races, the ‘hurry up, we’ll be late’, the ‘finish your milk’, the ‘brush your teeth’, the ‘don’t forget to put your swimming bag in your backpack’… And the books and the notebooks and the three-compartment pencil case and the diary and the mid-morning snack…

The amount of stuff that children carry means that many parents and grandparents carry their children’s backpacks on the way to or from school for fear that the weight will hurt their backs or even cause growth problems. A mistake. “Children have to always carry their own backpack. Except in specific cases where there is a previous pathology, scientific studies confirm that the weight of backpacks will not cause back pain or scoliosis,” explains Pablo Herrera, vice-dean of the Professional College of Physiotherapists of the Community of Madrid (CPFCM).

On the contrary, children who carry their backpack every day are less likely to suffer musculoskeletal problems in the future because their back muscles are stronger than those of schoolchildren who never carry one. “Carrying a backpack from home to school or to the bus stop is a very good way to encourage exercise, as well as a very healthy activity for children,” agree professionals in the sector. However, physiotherapists insist that “common sense should prevail and not overload backpacks because many times it is the children themselves who want to carry more things than they really need: notebooks that can be left in class, cans full of trading cards to exchange at recess, reading books that they are not asked for,” warns Pablo Herrero.

How many kilos?

As for the maximum weight that a child can bear, experts are not in favour of establishing a specific measure because “each child is in a different physical condition”. In any case, they consider that a child without previous back pathologies should be able to bear the weight of a school backpack without problems. “Many times we see grandparents carrying bags that cause more muscular problems for them than for their grandchildren and that cannot be. We are making children weaker. The message we transmit to them is that they are not capable, that they cannot carry the backpack, that they have to be careful… It is counterproductive. We want their backs not to hurt and what we are achieving is that in the future they feel discomfort because they have not strengthened it enough”, laments the vice-dean of the CPFCM.

Cart, yes or no?

It is precisely to prevent children from carrying too much weight that wheeled trolleys for carrying schoolbags became fashionable years ago. Some schools recommend them and others have banned them. What do physiotherapists say? “Wheels allow weight reduction when travelling on a flat surface, but it is also true that numerous studies have shown that carrying a backpack on a trolley puts greater strain on the child’s upper limbs when they have to go up and down stairs or walk on uneven ground. In short, a trolley would be advisable in cases where the child has to walk more than twenty minutes to get to school and is also heavily loaded. Otherwise, the most advisable thing from a health point of view for the child is to carry it on the back.”

Physiotherapists remind us that there is no correct way to wear it. “Tighter, looser… One way may be more or less comfortable than another, but it will not cause more harm in the long term. The best backpack is a strong back,” they conclude.