A kid with back pain?
How to make sure your child’s backpack is helping,
not hurting.
Now that school is fully in session,
and homework, projects, and book
reports are due, you may notice your
child is bringing more and more home
in their backpack. From lunchboxes to
textbooks, there’s plenty your kid needs
to succeed. But can they shoulder it all?
Kevin Neal, MD, chief of Pediatric Orthopedic
Surgery at Wolfson Children’s Hospital and
Pediatric Orthopedic Fellowship director
at Nemours Children’s Specialty Care,
recommends weighing your child’s backpack
to be sure it’s not too heavy for them. This is
especially important as the school year wears
on and students are in the thick of schoolwork,
sports, and other after-school activities which
may fill up their bags with gear.
“To measure the weight of a backpack,
the best way is to have a child stand on
the scale with and without the backpack,
then with the backpack, and subtract the
difference,” Dr. Neal explained. “The general
recommendation, which comes from the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), is that
the upper limit should be about 10% of body
weight. So, for a 100-pound child that’s about
10 pounds.”