A study concluded that being over-weight increases a kid’s risk of being bullied by 63 percent. Race, gender or family income do not play a role if the child is obese as previously thought.
“Now that about half of kids are overweight or obese, it doesn’t make you such an outlier anymore, so we thought maybe kids wouldn’t be bullied for being overweight anymore,” Dr. Julie Lumeng – assistant research scientist – Center For Human Growth and Development, University Of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Researchers looked for factors to help being bullied.
“What we found, much to our dismay, was that nothing seemed to matter. If you were obese, you were more likely to be bullied, no matter what,” Lumeng explained.
This study was of 821 boys and girls from a national sample of children from sites around the United States. The children were mostly White, half male, 15 percent over-weight in 3rd grade.
Teachers reported 34 percent of the study was bullied, mothers said 45 percent of children were bullied and 25 percent of the children expressed that they were bullied by 6th grade. “No matter how much we retested, the findings were very robust. Obese kids are more likely to be bullied,” declared Lumeng.
