According to the U.S. Consumer Products and Safety Commission, more than 7,000 children were injured last year due to overloaded backpacks, some weighing as much as 45 pounds. Experts estimate about half of all American school children carry too much weight in their backpacks, causing some kids to experience neck, shoulder and back pain.

Although experts recommend backpacks should weigh no more than 10 percent of a child’s weight, the average backpack weighs in at 20 percent of his or her weight.

In fact, 10 to 19 percent of children miss school or sports activities every year because of pain caused by heavy backpacks. Furthermore, 30 to 50 percent of adolescents complain of pain related to backpack use.

To help understand how heavy backpacks can injure kids, it helps to understand how the back functions. The spine is made of 33 bones called vertebrae, and between the vertebrae are discs that act as natural shock absorbers. When a heavy weight like a backpack filled with books is incorrectly placed on the shoulders, the weight’s force can pull you backward. To compensate, you often bend forward at the hips or arch the back, which can cause the spine to compress unnaturally. The heavy weight can cause shoulder, neck and back pain.

To help lighten the load, kids should limit personal items, use both straps to distribute the weight and wear backpacks over the strongest mid-back muscles. Carrying the backpack with their hands or one shoulder is not recommended. The best option is roller packs, but unfortunately most kids don’t consider them cool yet.

Adolescent girls ages 11 to 16 are most at risk because they experience a growth spurt during that age bracket. Girls often weigh less than boys, but still carry the same amount of backpack weight.

Kids who walk to and from school are also more likely to suffer Back pain from heavy packs because duration of use increases the risk of injury.

The good news is that hard science shows that back pain due to overloaded backpacks is usually temporary. The extra weight doesn’t cause structural or long-term damage to the spine nor does it cause scoliosis.

When we treat patients for backpack pain, we usually prescribe a 10-day supply of anti-inflammatory medicine like Motrin and suggest lifestyle changes to help reduce weight and the amount of carry time. In some cases, physical therapy maybe recommended.

Teachers and educators realize that improper backpack use is a health concern, and schools are implementing an array of methods to help alleviate the issue, from using more handouts and lighter materials to offering digital/electronic assignments to even providing duplicate set of books, one for school and one for home. The key is to keep children healthy so that they can go about their lives and do the things they want without unnecessary pain.

Here are helpful tips to help insure kids know to safely use a backpack.

• Choose it right. Selecting the right size of backpack is key.
• Pack it right. Pack only what is needed and limit personal effects. If the backpack forces the child to move forward to carry, it’s too heavy.
• Wear it right. Use both shoulder straps and adjust them so they’re snug, but not too tight. If the backpack has a waist strap, use it.

By: Matthew Dobbs, MD, orthopaedic surgeon on staff at St. Louis Children’s Hospital – Education.com

Heredity

Heredity is the totality of characteristics transmitted from the parents to the offspring. The view that behavior and development are primarily directed by heredity, or nature, was initially set forth by Jean Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century. Rousseau was a French philosopher who believed that a child’s growth and development were ultimately determined by nature, and that the child’s surroundings had little influence on development. According to this viewpoint, nature provides the primary guidance for healthy growth and development. This philosophy has been advocated by Gesell (Gesell & Ilg, 1943), Jensen (1980), and others.

Environment

The position that environment is primarily responsible for how a child develops can be traced to the work of seventeenth-century British philosopher John Locke. Locke resurrected many of the teachings of Aristotle in describing the mind of an infant as a tabula rasa, or “blank slate.” Locke believed that all of an individual’s experiences contribute to filling the blank slate. The child was perceived as a passive receiver of information and thus easily shaped by environmental influences.

Watson (1924) and many other theorists (e.g., Skinner, 1961) have been strong advocates for the environmentalist position. Watson was a prominent force in American psychology and adhered almost exclusively to the nurture philosophy of the nature–nurture controversy. The basic tenets of his thinking are revealed in one of his earlier works (Watson, 1924):

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief, and yes, even beggar man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, race of his ancestors. (p. 104)

Watson represented an extreme environmentalist position that downplayed biological influences on development and truly emphasized Locke’s tabula rasa philosophy.

Interaction of Heredity and Environment

As a resolution to these seemingly opposing positions, common sense dictates that neither heredity nor environment alone explains a child’s typical growth and development. Heredity does not dominate development, nor are environmental influences solely responsible for one’s personality, talents, or physical abilities. It seems that an interaction between these two positions most likely accounts for the multiple facets or elements of development. Although the interaction between heredity and environment is well accepted from a contemporary viewpoint, the exact degree of interaction remains a mystery; however, current scientific discoveries in the area of genomics (the study of genes and their expression) should provide clearer guidance with respect to the degree or magnitude of this interaction in the next several decades. The task for observers of child behavior and development should be to focus on describing the specific aspects of each philosophical position that may be affecting the development of any particular child. For Nathaniel, the interaction of heredity and environment clearly is present; but, how this interaction will manifest over time remains to be seen.

By: S.R. Hooper|W. Umansky – Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall – Education.com

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