Overweight Children Face Stigma

The July issue of Psych Bulletin has an article which indicates that overweight children are teased by their peers as early as age 3. They face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes. Children who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.

Even with a growing percentage of overweight people, the stigma shows no signs of subsiding, due to the fact that television and other media continue to reinforce negative stereotypes.

Children as young as 3 are more likely to consider overweight peers to be mean, stupid, ugly and sloppy. A growing body of research shows that parents and educators are also biased against heavy children. In a 1999 study of 115 middle and high school teachers, 20 percent said they believed obese people are untidy, less likely to succeed and more emotional.

Teasing

This article was written by Dr. Collie Conelly (http://www.independent.com/online_onlys/2007/02/teasing_a_real_problem_and_sol.html ) Teasing is a problem with children of all ages. Psychologists define teasing as an ambiguous message containing both humor and hostility. The ambiguity makes an appropriate response difficult.

Most children identify teasing as the number one concern that they have regarding school.

Children are typically told to ignore teasing or become aggressive with the teaser. The research on ignoring indicates that ignoring a teaser usually incites a more aggressive response from the teaser. Additionally, ignoring probably erodes the self-esteem of the target because of the inactive, helpless stance. Conversely, acting aggressive when teased is an active stance which could help self-esteem in the short run, but there are long term draw-backs. Aggressive action can easily escalate into a physical fight and recommending aggressive action communicates that harming another person is an acceptable value.

This article discusses an alternative respose to teasing called affiliative humor. As Dr. Conely describes, affiliative humor focuses upon the humorous part of the teasing message. By focusing upon the humor in the teasing message the target takes control of the interaction and transforms the interaction into a level interaction rather than a one-down interaction. The message is that we are both funny and clever. Affiliative humor jokes about the topic without putting any person down.