“THE number of overweight children is rising, a study has found that obese children under ten are still more likely to be bullied by thinner classmates even if they are popular or smart.”

As parents we must set the example and be aware of our health from all points of view.

15 May 2010, In many cultures fat is synonymous with good fortune and prosperity. You come from a well endowed home.

Which is fine until your body becomes over endowed and starts spilling over. And you are not yet ten. Regrettably, the odds of children growing out of it are slim, if one can play on the word. Parents, in their froth of fondness commit great folly. For years they will endearingly believe that the child, little apple of their eye, is only enjoying puppy fat and it will disappear. Puppy fat has been a good excuse and further compounded by the larger family in which grandparents add to the conspiracy and feed their children’s brood with calories and kindness.

They could not be more unkind. Yet, the awareness level has done little to wake everyone up to this self indulgence and its harmfulness. On the contrary there are more fat children now in wealthy high per capital societies than before. We continue to equate plumpness with success and good breeding.

And if we do not get the fact that we might as well be poisoning our children by the ongoing delusion that they are big boned new research shows that not only are the couch potatoes lazy as drones they also are soft targets.

ALTHOUGH THE number of overweight children is rising, a study has found that obese children under ten are still more likely to be bullied by thinner classmates even if they are popular or smart.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that obese children are picked on more, regardless of gender, race, social skills, or academic achievement.

Dr. Julie C. Lumeng, who led the study, said she found the study slightly surprising and “disturbing.”

“Unlike in the 1980s so many kids are obese now. In some schools, half the class may be overweight … so I really thought that maybe being obese really doesn’t result in being bullied as much anymore. I was wrong,” she told Reuters Health. A quarter of the children reported being bullied, although their mothers said about 45 per cent of them were bullied.

According to the researchers, the odds of being bullied were 63 per cent higher for an obese child compared to a healthy-weight peer.

Children can be cruel and in their minds nicknames like Fatty, Jumbo, Big Martha, Roundy are par for the course and not hurtful.

One amazing fact is Lumeng also thought she’d find protective factors, like having good social skills and doing well in school.

“I thought maybe this would protect obese kids from being bullied. But no matter how we ran and re-ran the analysis, the link between being obese and being bullied remained,” Lumeng said.

“Parents of obese children rate bullying as their top health concern,” Lumeng and her colleagues note in their report published in Pediatrics. Obese children who are bullied also suffer more depression, anxiety and loneliness. “There is no simple solution to the problem,” Lumeng told Reuters Health. “I think it reflects the general prejudice against obese people,” and children, even at a very young age, pick up on this.

One of the observations that really stood out to me was that one parental characteristic that increased the likelihood of child bullying were parents getting angry with their child frequently and feeling that their child often did things to bother them.  This goes back to how it is a domino affect many times.  A boss gets angry with dad, dad comes home and get angry with mom or the kids, the kids get angry with the dog, sibling, or schoolmate and then it just continues.  The anger and frustration becomes bullying.

On the other side though it was found that parents also played a protective role. Those who shared ideas and talked with their child, and those who met most of their child’s friends were less likely to have children who bully.  Keeping those lines of communication open are so important to our children.  For them to know that they have someone that is willing to listen and hear their concerns and stories is a way of teaching and demonstrating empathy, which is key to preventing bullying and victims of bullies.

This is an article from a magazine about living with ADD.  I thought you may enjoy it and here is the link to the website.  There are a number of good articles to be found on this site.

Many parents of ADHD children worry about their being bullied. But some children with ADHD are bullies. According to a recent study, a child with ADHD is three times more likely to bully other kids than a child without the condition. Here’s how to stop bullying in its tracks.

Be all ears.

If a teacher calls complaining about your child’s aggressive behavior, you may want to make excuses for his actions. Don’t! Gather information—the who, what, when, and where—so you can help your child and end the call on an up note, says Alan Kazdin, Ph.D., director of the Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic at Yale University.
Don’t accuse him.

Avoid the temptation to yell. Instead, calmly say, “That was your teacher on the phone, and she said you were seen pushing Johnny on the playground. What’s your side of the story?” Don’t be surprised if he admits nothing and shows no remorse. “You should remind him of how he felt the last time someone was mean to him,” says Robert Sege, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Limit opportunities to be a bully.

Ask the teacher where the bullying occurs. If it’s on the school bus, try assigned seating—putting your child near the bus driver and away from his target. If it’s at recess, have your child play only in a well-supervised area.

Play to your child’s strengths.

“Bullies are natural leaders,” says Sege. Talk with the teacher about giving your child a job to do when he usually acts up. Examples: Starting a playground clean-up crew or delivering notes to the office.

Help your child control his emotions.

If your child lashes out when others tease him, use role-playing to help him regulate his feelings. “Say, ‘ I love you and think you’re wonderful, but I’m going to taunt you as part of a game,’” says Kazdin. “‘No matter what I say, ignore me and don’t get aggressive.’ Then you might say, ‘You’re weird.’” If your child doesn’t reply, praise him. Then say, “I’m going to call you more names, and you are going to walk away.” If he does, praise him again.

The more secure your child feels, the less likely he will bully others.

Kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child’s behavior that can lead to social rejection.

The factors involve a child’s inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.

In the United States, 10 to 13 percent of school-age kids experience some form of rejection by their peers. In addition to causing mental health problems, bullying and social isolation can increase the likelihood a child will get poor grades, drop out of school, or develop substance abuse problems, the researchers say.

“It really is an under-addressed public health issue,” said lead researcher Clark McKown of the Rush Neurobehavioral Center in Chicago.

And the social skills children gain on the playground or elsewhere could show up later in life, according to Richard Lavoie, an expert in child social behavior who was not involved with the study. Unstructured playtime — that is, when children interact without the guidance of an authority figure — is when children experiment with the relationship styles they will have as adults, he said.

Underlying all of this: “The number one need of any human is to be liked by other humans,” Lavoie told LiveScience. “But our kids are like strangers in their own land.” They don’t understand the basic rules of operating in society and their mistakes are usually unintentional, he said.

Social rejection

In two studies, McKown and colleagues had a total of 284 children, ages 4 to 16 years old, watch movie clips and look at photos before judging the emotions of the actors based on their facial expressions, tones of voice and body postures. Various social situations were also described and the children were questioned about appropriate responses.

The results were then compared to parent/teacher accounts of the participants’ friendships and social behavior.

Kids who had social problems also had problems in at least one of three different areas of nonverbal communication: reading nonverbal cues; understanding their social meaning; and coming up with options for resolving a social conflict.

A child, for example, simply may not notice a person’s scowl of impatience or understand what a tapped foot means. Or she may have trouble reconciling the desires of a friend with her own. “It is important to try to pinpoint the area or areas in a child’s deficits and then build those up,” McKown explained.

Ways to help

When children have prolonged struggles with socializing, “a vicious cycle begins,” Lavoie said. Shunned children have few opportunities to practice social skills, while popular kids are busy perfecting theirs. However, having just one or two friends can be enough to give a child the social practice he or she needs, he said.

Parents, teachers and other adults in a child’s life can help, too. Instead of reacting with anger or embarrassment to a child who, say, asks Aunt Mindy if her new hairdo was a mistake, parents should teach social skills with the same tone they use for teaching long division or proper hygiene. If presented as a learning opportunity, rather than a punishment, children usually appreciate the lesson.

“Most kids are so desperate to have friends, they just jump on board,” Lavoie said.

To teach social skills, Lavoie advises a five-step approach in his book “It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend: Helping the Child with Learning Disabilities Find Social Success” (Touchstone, 2006). The process works for children with or without learning disabilities and is best conducted immediately after a transgression has been made.

1)     Ask the child what happened and listen without judgment.

2)     Ask the child to identify their mistake. (Often children only know that someone got upset, but don’t understand their own role in the outcome.)

3)     Help the child identify the cue they missed or mistake they made, by asking something like: “How would you feel if Emma was hogging the tire swing?” Instead of lecturing with the word “should,” offer options the child “could” have taken in the moment, such as: “You could have asked Emma to join you or told her you would give her the swing after your turn.”

4)     Create an imaginary but similar scenario where the child can make the right choice. For example, you could say, “If you were playing with a shovel in the sand box and Aiden wanted to use it, what would you do?”

5)     Lastly, give the child “social homework” by asking him to practice this new skill, saying: “Now that you know the importance of sharing, I want to hear about something you share tomorrow.”

The studies are detailed in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. They were funded by the Dean and Rosemarie Buntrock Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation.

Here is the link to the article in case you would like to look at some of the other articles.  Live Science article

It is incumbent on us then to be alert to signs of things changing for our child and to ask questions and pay attention to them.  Most bullying takes place out of site of those in authority.  I remember an adult who told me about an occaision when they were trapped by a fellow employee in an upstairs file room out of site of everyone and pushed against the wall and threatened because they thought the boss was beginning to trust that person more than the bully was comfortable with.

But if a child begins to lose interest in past friends, begins to do poorly in school, feels sick every morning prior to going to school, or comes home with scrapes and is not willing to tell the story to your satisfaction, these may all be signs of bullying.  The time for us to ask the right questions is now.  How we ask the questions and the importance of our reaction in our next post.

Our child and for that matter ourselves if we are being bullied at work, can grow in this area as we build confidence, learn both concepts and skills and develop a support system around us to combat bullies.

The very first step is recognizing that being a target is not our fault and that we do not have to put up with it continuing.  In fact we can do something about it whether we are a child or an adult.  In the next post I will discuss how to know before our child admits it – if they are a target of a bully.

Bullying may begin because we feel powerless in another situation or that we do not have any choices.  Or it may be that we are angry about something and we are taking it out on someone else.  Or it may be that we even may have a certain amount of jealousy or contempt.

The author of the book “ The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander” believes that it is about contempt and suggests 5 ways that we can prevent our own child from being a bully.  I have listed them in bold and then commented on them from my own experience.

Watch your own behavior. It is very easy for us to send a message to our child without even realizing the message they are receiving or how they may interpret  how they can use  the message.  The way we treat others, joke about them or comment on them can say to our child that it is ok to have ‘fun’ at another’s expence.  The use of racist’s jokes or poking fun at the  looks of another person may give our child permission to do the same to people that they meet.
Nurture empathy and sympathy. Even as adults we can be unaware of the affect our behavior or comments are having on another person.  As we carefully monitor our own behavior we can also point out when our child does a kind deed, the emotion that they feel as well as the emotion that the other person feels.  The more we can demonstrate the consequences – good and bad – of our behavior and words on others, the more we are nurturing empathy.  On the other hand, voicing or getting pleasure from another persons feeling bad or distressed does not nurture empathy and may give permission to our child that it is OK to make someone else feel uncomfortable.
Monitor TV, video games and music. I do not believe that games, music and other forms of entertainment cause mean behavior, but they can jade us to that sort of behavior and make it difficult for a young person to determine what is right and wrong.  From my personal experience I know that over the years as I studied the subject of peace and reduced the amount of movies and television shows that I watched that contained violence, I found that I was not able to tolerate it as much.  While I do not suggest that we delete media from our kids lives – I do believe that we can be sure to have discussions with our children about what is right and wrong and help them to see the affects of those acts on others – even if they were in a form of entertainment.
Teach friendship skills. One of the number one ways I like to teach victims of bullies to  overcome this is to make the bully your friend.  Unfortunately many times bullies do not know how to be a friend.  Teaching our children to be a friend can be done both by socializing them with their peers and demonstrating and point out to them our own behavior.  In addition I would suggest that providing opportunities for them to serve others in their community and discussing and letting them see the affect on the recipients of their kindness can really drive home how to be a friend.
Engage them in energizing activities. Challenge your child in activities that require them to exert energy.  I am not a believer in “if you are angry go home and take your frustration out on the pillow”, as I believe that this is only teaching us to react with violence on our pillow and one day it is possible that we could give our selves permission to do the same on someone else.  But I do believe if we are not getting enough physical challenges that have to do something with that energy and it could come out in ways that are not appropriate.
The points that we have outlined above are good for all of us as parents whether our child or ourselves are bullies or not.  All of us can use reminders on ourselves to be kind to others and be aware of the consequences of everything that we do and say in the course of our day.

For more information about Mr. Joe and his martial arts school visit Balanced Life Skills in Annapolis MD.  Mr. Joe is available for Bully Prevention seminars for all age groups in your school or at his martial arts studio.