Obesity Makes Children a Target for Bullying

Physicians who should lose their licenses; teachers who should be fired.

Obese children are more likely to be bullied than their nonobese peers regardless of sex, race, socioeconomic status (SES), social skills, or academic achievement, according to a University of Michigan study published online May 3 in Pediatrics. This suggests that they are being bullied because of their weight and not for other reasons.

Now, onto how they did the study.

The study included 821 children in the third, fifth, and sixth grades who were participants in The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development — a longitudinal study focusing on child behavior and development.

Participants were recruited at birth beginning in 1991 and are representative of the demographics of each of the 10 participating study sites.

Height and weight were measured during study visits in the third, fifth, and sixth grades by standard protocol. An 18-item questionnaire developed by longitudinal study investigators was administered to the children, whereas a 43-item questionnaire was administered to both teachers and mothers. In grade 3, investigators found that 14.6% of the children were overweight and 17.3% were obese.

And what did these docs do once they found out that these children were being nutritionally abused?

Did they do their legally mandated duty to report the abuse to child protective services?

You can bet that they did not.

And the teachers?

The study showed that teachers reported that 33.9% of the children in grade 6 had been bullied. On the basis of parental reports, 44.5% of the same children had been bullied, whereas 24.9% of the children themselves reported having been bullied in the same grade.

Almost certainly the same failure. "Reported" - but not to child protective services.

This is a big reason why the problem is out of control.