Backpacks Are TOO Heavy!

My son’s backpack weighs 30 pounds some nights. He is in Junior High and his teachers have no concept of what one another is giving for homework. He can hardly make it to the car some days and I would prefer him to walk home on other days but I can’t do it because he’d never make it home with the backpack. Can’t schools do something about this?

This is a fairly common complaint. I think parents today think that this is a new phenomenon, but kids have been lugging home heavy books for quite some time. A seventy-two year old friend of mine says, “Heavy backpacks have always made kids strong and smart, why complain?” Some schools have tried to remedy this problem by assigning two sets of books to each student, one set to be kept at home and another to be kept at school. I find this solution to be pretty ingenious, so you might want to check with your son’s school to see if you can borrow a set of textbooks for the school year. If this is not an option, you may want to consider getting a backpack that rolls with one of those pull-up handles. I’m not sure if this is “cool”, but it will save your son from lugging around the weight on his back.