President and First Lady Obama, along with the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, will be hosting a conference on bullying prevention today at the White House. And considering how tech savvy today’s kids are, cyber-bullying will be a key component of the conversation. Keeping with that theme Facebook will play an active role in the summit by hosting a live screening of the conference and digital discussion on how people can make the Internet a safer place for children by promoting a deeper sense of respect and understanding Online.
To watch the conference and join the conversation, please check out some of the Facebook pages dedicated to the summit. In conjunction with national efforts to raise awareness on bullying, Children’s has recently launched an anti-bullying collaborative called the BACPAC (Bullying And Cyberbullying Prevention & Advocacy Collaborative). The following are stories Thrive has run on the subject of bullying and how the effort to reduce its prevalence will require a cohesive approach that involves parents, educators, the medical community and our children.
A year on, what Phoebe Prince has taught us about bullying
Claire McCarthy, MD
In this post Dr. Claire McCarthy weighs in on what the tragic case of Phoebe Prince has taught us all about the deep emotional scars bullying can leave.
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Food bullies
Joshua Feblowitz, a former Children’s writer and patient, shares what it was like for him growing up with a severe food allergy and how he was occasionally a bully target because of it.
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Parental bullying and overweight kids
Overweight children are more likely to be bullied than other children. But their torment isn’t limited to the playground. Read a story that focuses on how some parents’ “tough love” approach to getting their children to lose weight borders on parental bullying.
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Middle school’s no walk in the park
Like Phoebe Price, 13 year-old Thea Hickey was also bullied at school and Online. In the following first-person account, Thea talks about her own bullying experience and offers advice to kids and adults about how to better address the problem.
If your child were being bullied, would you know about it? Most of us would like to believe that if our kids were being targeted at school they’d tell us right away, but unfortunately that’s not always the case. Data shows that many bullying victims fail to report their harassment. This could be for any number of reasons, but in many cases the victim stays silent because he’s scared that telling someone will make the bullying worse, is embarrassed about being picked on or thinks the adults in his life can’t do anything to stop it.
The journal Pediatrics released two studies this week that focused on the mental and physical wellbeing of children who don’t conform to typical gender roles.
