When your kid is fat-shamed?and what you can do about it
As a kid who started struggling with his weight around age seven, Nancy Leslie?s* youngest son, Cameron, got picked on by classmates all the time. ?He even quit sailing lessons because he got teased about his weight,? says the North Bay, Ont., mother of three. And when Cameron was bullied about his weight at school, teachers and school authorities wouldn?t step in. ?Their attitude was, well, he?s a fat kid, he?s going to get picked on. Kids are cruel,? says Leslie.
A new policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics is aimed at raising awareness about the kind of stigma kids like Cameron face every day. According to lead author Stephen Pont, an Austin, Texas, paediatrician and the founding director of the AAP section on obesity, the guilt and shame kids feel when they?re singled out due to their size is harmful in multiple ways. ?Research is now showing that weight stigma can result in things like social isolation, binge eating, not going to see the doctor, and decreasing physical activity, creating a negative feedback cycle that results in increased weight gain,? he explains. The emotional and psychological fall-out is even worse: Pont and his co-authors cite research showing that weight-based teasing and bullying is linked with an increased risk of problems ranging from anxiety to substance abuse. It?s also associated with a two-fold jump in the odds of thinking about or attempting suicide.
More than 5,000 educators who responded to a survey by the US National...
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