Seeing your child come home from school bending forward to handle the weight of a fully loaded school backpack is cause for concern. Backpacks that are too heavy for the child can cause back pain and spasms, shoulder pain, and neck pain, among other issues.

Below are a number of practical tips to significantly reduce the weight that your child is bearing on the way to and from school:

• Buy a rolling backpack, especially useful if your child doesn’t have to go up/down a lot of stairs
• Get lightest back pack possible, e.g. Lands’ End featherweight backpack, which is lighter than most nylon backpacks of comparable size
• Make a copy of the chapters of any heavy textbooks, so the child has the chapters he or she needs at home and can leave the textbooks at school
• Download the textbook on your iPad or Kindle
• Buy an extra copy of any heavy textbooks and keep them at home. Often textbooks can be purchased inexpensively as used books on Amazon.com or via homeschooling sites that feature used books and/or book trades. See About.com for a list of homeschool textbook buying options.
• Carry a laptop in a separate bag, such as a laptop case with a handle
• For musical instruments, which can be heavy and cumbersome, consider an additional instrument and/or purchasing a used instrument to keep at home

Source: www.spine-health.com; Stephanie Burke; August 15, 2012.