For years, the teenage girl endured soul-crushing abuse from schoolmates, strangers and even her family because of her weight. Rather than behaving civilly by holding a door open for her, some fellow students once closed it on her fingers and taunted her that she might eat less if her hand were injured. Her mother told her she faced a life of loneliness unless she dropped weight, that no one would ever love her at her size. Too often, others seemed to define the teen by the obesity she battled rather than her qualities as a person.
The harassment from fellow students became so bad the adolescent dropped out of school. In her late teens, desperate to lose weight, the girl had bariatric surgery to reduce the size of her stomach and limit the calories and nutrients her body absorbed. “She said after she had weight-loss surgery that she became a person, but the world did not see her as a person before,” says researcher Zoe Meleo-Erwin, who interviewed the young woman and 31 other bariatric patients and surgeons between 2011-2012 as part of her dissertation research. The story shows the debilitating effects mocking a teenager about his or her weight can have on the victim, says Meleo-Erwin, an assistant professor of public health at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. (Meleo-Erwin ensured the study participants’ anonymity.)
Recent research backs up Meleo-Erwin’s observations. Teenagers who are teased and harassed about their weight might run a greater risk of obesity in adulthood and suffer from a negative body image, according to the study published in April in Preventive Medicine. Obesity is associated with diabetes, stroke, heart disease and high blood pressure. Teasing teenagers about the number of pounds they carry can exacerbate the adolescents’ weight issues, with long-lasting effects, the study suggests. Adolescents who are teased about their weight are more likely to put on pounds and turn to food as a way to cope with emotional distress, according to the research, a longitudinal study involving more than 1,800 participants who responded to surveys over a span of 15 years.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
“Weight-based bullying has negative health consequences. Teenagers who are teased about their weight may turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like binge eating and avoiding exercise,” says Rebecca Puhl, lead author of the study and deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut, where she is also a professor in the department of human development and family studies.
In the U.S., the number of teens who’ve been bullied because of their weight is in the millions. About 20 percent of children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A 2012 survey found that 64 percent of teens in weight-loss programs had been bullied about their weight. Most of the taunting was by peers, but some of the harassment was from parents, teachers and coaches, the survey found. The bullying is perpetrated in a variety of ways, Puhl says. By peers, teens are mocked about their weight verbally in and out of school; are teased online on such platforms as Facebook and Twitter; and are excluded from activities such as parties and other social events, she says. Some adolescents endure teasing about their weight from parents and siblings, she says.
If you’re the parent, aunt, uncle, teacher, coach, religious leader or friend of a teen who’s being bullied because of his or her weight, you can help the adolescent cope with the difficult situation. Experts recommend these strategies:
Emphasize the bullying isn’t their fault. Many teenagers who are taunted about their weight blame themselves for the abuse and for their excessive pounds, Puhl says. “A lot of teens internalize the stigma of being overweight and blame themselves for being bullied, they think it’s their fault for not being thin,” Puhl says. “We need parents (and others) to communicate to teens that they’re not to blame for being teased or bullied, that it’s the responsibility of whoever’s taunting them.”
[See: What to Say and Do If Your Daughter Thinks She’s Fat.]
Don’t urge the teen to lose weight to stop the harassment. Doing so would imply that the adolescent is responsible for the bullying and could stop it if he or she would just adopt better eating and exercise habits and lose weight, Puhl says. In fact, personal behavior is just one of a complex set of factors relating to weight, she says. Those factors include genetics, family customs and traditions about eating and accessibility to healthy foods and exercise opportunities, she says. It’s good to encourage teens with weight issues (all adolescents, for that matter) to adopt healthy habits, but that is a separate issue from coping with bullying and should be a separate discussion, Puhl advises.
Be mindful of your language. Parents and others use nicknames for teens they consider a term of endearment but may be harmful to the adolescent, says Dr. Tyree “Tye” Winters, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Straftord, New Jersey. “I have many Latino, Spanish-speaking patients whose pet name for their children or a sibling is ‘Gordo’ (which means fat in Spanish) or ‘Gordito’ (which means chubby in Spanish),” Winters says. “We don’t call someone ‘asthma kid’ or ‘sickle-cell kid,’ but we do use language like ‘Big Man’ and ‘Little Fatty.’ If you’re a parent, put yourself in your child’s shoes.”
Encourage the teen to cultivate his or her talents. Is the teenager grappling with bullying interested in art, dancing, writing or technology? Encourage him or her to develop interests and talents that could boost his or her self-esteem and confidence, says Mayra Mendez, a psychotherapist and program coordinator of intellectual and developmental disabilities and mental health services at Providence Saint John’s Child and Family Development Center. “We want to build confidence independent of weight,” she says. “Help them explore options. They’ll see if they have a talent they work on, they can succeed, which will boost confidence that can provide a shield against the taunting.”
Have the adolescent make two lists. One list should include qualities that make a person likable, the other, traits that make a person unlikable. Odds are “being overweight” and “being slender” won’t be on either list, says Oksana Hagerty, an educational and developmental psychologist who serves as a learning specialist at Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida. This exercise helps teens learn that “likability hinges upon a lot more than being slender,” Hagerty says.
[See: 10 of the Biggest Health Threats Facing Your Kids This School Year.]
Urge teens to seek support if they’re being bulled. Let adolescents know that if they’re being bullied, they should seek the support of a trusted adult, such as a parent, a teacher, a coach or a school counselor, says Lisa Rosen, an assistant professor of psychology at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. “Adults can help teenagers problem-solve and be an advocate for them,” she says.
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6 Strategies for Helping a Teen Who’s Being Bullied About His or Her Weight originally appeared on usnews.com
