Two recently published studies connect bullying to things that parents might not immediately think would make a child a target for a bully. The studies found that kids with food allergies, and kids who are overweight, are especially likely to get bullied. You might want to talk with your kids to see if this is something they are experiencing at school.
Much has been said of the negative impact that bullies have on the peers that they target. It happens at school, on the playground, and across the internet. Sadly, there have been several stories in the news about teens who committed suicide after experiencing cyber-bullying. This is incredibly sad.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much for a bully to decide to select someone as a target. Sometimes, all it takes is for the bully to perceive a difference between himself or herself and the classmate that becomes their target.
Studies done in the United States show that children who had disabilities were 2 to 3 times more likely to have been the victim of a bully than were their peers, (who had no disabilities). Often, these children were being picked on because of their special needs.
A new study was done that might be an eye-opener for parents of kids who have food allergies. The study was led by Dr. Eyal Shemesh, from the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York (along with his colleagues).
The researchers surveyed 251 kids who were being seen at an allergy clinic. They also surveyed the children’s parents. The kids were between the ages of 8 and 17. All of them had been diagnosed with a food allergy. Over 45% of the kids said they had been bullied or harassed for any reason. 32% said they were bullied specifically because of their food allergy Dr. Shemesh had this to say to Reuters Health:
Our finding is entirely consistently with what you find with children with a disability.
He also said that a food allergy “is a vulnerability that can be very easily exploited, so of course it will be exploited”.
Another recent study was done by researchers from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The study involved 361 teens who had been enrolled in weight-loss camps. Almost 2/3 of the teens had been bullied because of their size. The researchers found that the likelihood of being bullied due to weight increased with weight. In other words, the heaviest kids had almost a 100% chance of being bullied.
Image by Steven Depolo on Flickr