Every morning this is a familiar scene to us when we drop BB & GG to school. Parents carrying their children’s school + other bags.

Now this would not bother me so much if this was the younger lot – kindergarten to P1/P2, whose bags are sometimes bigger than themselves, but when I see this with older children, some of them wearing a prefect and/or school leader badge, I get really angry! Can’t a 10 year old and older carry his/her own bag to school? Does this service have to be carried out by (insert appropriate care-giver here – parent, helper, grand-parent)?

I remember during GG & BB’s orientation in school, during the first week of Primary 1, the school principal, in her talk to the parents of the incoming cohort told the child this, and I paraphrase as I can’t remember the exact words she said: “Your parents go to work and when they do, they carry a laptop and a bag. This is related to their job and so they are responsible for it. Your jobs are to come to school and learn, so you need to carry your school bag yourself and not ask your parents to do that!” So many parents who were in the school hall that day seem to have forgotten these words…

And we wonder/make fun of when memes of the NS man whose helper seems to be carrying his backpack goes viral like the picture above. Aren’t we all responsible for this in some way? What is to say 10-12 years from now, it will not be our children being made the butt of jokes like this?

For those interested in what we do – GG & BB have been always encouraged to carry their own bags, right from Kindergarten. Neither S nor I like to carry their bags, school or otherwise, without a solid reason.