Allergies, extra weight tied to bullying

A new research links between allergy, obesity, and children being subjected to bullying, and urges parents to talk about it

Kids who have food allergies or are overweight may be especially likely to get bullied by their peers, two new studies suggest.
Bullying has become a concern among parents, doctors and school administrators since research and news stories emerged linking bullying - including online "cyberbullying" - with depression and even suicide.
Studies suggest between one in ten and one in three of all kids and teens are bullied - but those figures may vary by location and demographics, researchers noted.
The new findings come from two studies published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
In one, Dr. Eyal Shemesh from the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and his colleagues surveyed 251 kids who were seen at an allergy clinic and their parents. The children were all between age eight and 17 with a diagnosed food allergy.
Just over 45 percent of them said they'd been bullied or harassed for any reason, and 32 percent reported being bullied because of their allergy in particular.
"Our finding is entirely consistently with what you find with children with a disability," Shemesh said.
A food allergy, he said, "is a vulnerability that can be very easily exploited, so of course it will be exploited."
The kids in the study were mostly white and well-off, the researcher said - a group that you'd expect would be targeted less often. So bullying may be more common in poorer and minority children who also have food allergies.
But allergies aren't the only cause of teasing and harassment by peers.
In another study, researchers from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, found that almost two-thirds of 361 teens enrolled in weight-loss camps had been bullied due to their size.
That likelihood increased with weight, so that the heaviest kids had almost a 100 percent chance of being bullied, Rebecca Puhl and her colleagues found. Verbal teasing was the most common form of bullying, but more than half of bullied kids reported getting taunted online or through texts and emails as well.
'START THE CONVERSATION'
Shemesh's team found only about half of parents knew when their food-allergic child was being bullied, and kids tended to be better off when their families were aware of the problem.
He said parents should feel comfortable asking kids if they're being bothered at school or elsewhere - and that even if it only happens once, bullying shouldn't be ignored.
"We want parents to know," he said. "Start the conversation."
That's the same for parents of overweight and obese children, he added.
"Kids need their parents to be their allies in these situations," he said. "Their parents can help them still feel strong."
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