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Bullying

Can the term bullying be overused?

by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on October 27, 2011

We recently received the following comment on a Thriving post about bullying:

“My daughter is 7 years old. Yesterday she was accused of bullying another girl on her soccer team by a parent who said that my daughter is the reason this girl scared to come to practice. She used an incident of the girl taking my daughter’s “pink” soccer ball and my daughter wanting it back (and arguing with her to give it back) from as my daughter being a bully.

I know my daughter is not perfect, but this seems extreme.

Every time the girl shows up she does cartwheels, runs around and plays with her friends from school on the team. I’ve never seen anything to indicate this girl is unhappy there. Three parents have come forward, including the coach, who have said that they have never seen my daughter bully this girl or any other child on the team and that the incident was not as the parent described. The coach suggested the parent is looking for an excuse as to why she never brought her daughter or practice or games.

I know bullying is awful, but now bullying is used for everything when it is also not the case. It seems to me that as much as there is horrible bullying, people also use it against others when it is not true. This person is hurting my daughter. How do I handle this?”

This stuck me as a very valid concern. To learn more I reached out to Peter Raffalli, MD, FAAP, director of Children’s Hospital Boston’s BACPAC (Bullying and Cyberbullying Prevention and Advocacy Collaborative). In the following blog post he addresses this mother’s issue. Full story »

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A doctor’s response to bullying

by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on September 22, 2011

Kelly as a toddler

We recently shared a blog written by Children’s patient Kelly Rock, who for years was bullied and excluded as a result of a medical condition. Kelly is an amazing young woman, and her blog post spurred a great deal of conversation on our Facebook page.

In response to Kelly’s story, Peter Raffalli, MD, FAAP, director of Children’s Hospital Boston’s BACPAC (Bullying and Cyberbullying Prevention and Advocacy Collaborative) has written a companion blog exploring bullying’s affect on health and provides advice for parents on behaviors to look out for if you fear your child may be a bullying victim.

Reading Kelly’s account of her childhood experience with bullying, I am truly struck by her courage. She also brings insight on the impact bullying has on its victims and the potential protective influences family and friends can provide. Bullying is such a common and age-old problem, but sometimes I marvel at how overlooked it can be. However, in the last decade we have seen a groundswell of attention to the scourge of bullying.

Kelly clearly had one important weapon in the battle against bullying: a strong, supportive, loving family. Studies show that one of the protective influences in bullying dynamics is a strong supportive family and a good friendship network. Communication between family members is important. Victims of bullying are very reluctant to report it or talk about it. If communication with your child is poor to begin with, then the chance of detecting the bullying is poor. Full story »

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Our patients’ stories: Bullying due to a medical condition

by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on September 21, 2011

On September 21-22 The U.S. Department of Education will host the second annual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit in Washington, D.C. This year’s goals are to engage government and nongovernmental partners to help identify the best ways to reduce bullying. In the following post, a Children’s patient discusses how she was bullied because of her medical condition and shares how her parents and medical team helped her deal with the situation.

By Kelly Rock

Kelly and her twin sister Megan

Growing up with an identical twin, you can expect a lot of comparisons to your sibling. But for my identical twin sister Megan and I the experience was slightly different. Instead of always hearing, “you guys look so alike,” we heard plenty of comments like, “why doesn’t Kelly look more like Megan?”

I was born with a rare facial deformity called Hypertelorbitism, which basically means I was born with my eyes being far apart and a nose that developed differently. Being born with Hypertelorbatism presented me with a good deal of challenges growing up. At 19 I’ve already undergone 8 surgeries at Children’s Hospital Boston and am scheduled for another one soon. At times I feel like I grew up in the operating room, and there were plenty of times where I wished I could’ve been outside playing with my friends instead of being in a hospital bed attached to IV’s, wires, and drinking all kinds of nasty tasting medicines to ward off infection. But through it all I knew that all the medical attention was best for me. I also knew that my plastic surgeon, John B. Mulliken, MD, director of Children’s of Craniofacial Anomalies Program, would do everything in his power to make me look my very best, even if that meant spending fourteen hours on one surgery. (I underwent that one when I was just 9 years old.)

Growing up, my family and medical team at Children’s were always very supportive in helping me overcome the challenges of Hypertelorbitism, but I can’t say the same about other kids my age. I used to be made fun of on a daily basis because of how I looked. I remember going to camp and having kids laugh and exclude me, or try to make me feel alienated just because I looked different. To this day I vividly remember a day in third grade, when I tried to play hopscotch with some of my classmates but they just turned their backs to and said I couldn’t play. Full story »

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No place like home? One in four LGB teens are driven out

by Andrea Mooney on August 3, 2011

Tragic stories of teens being bullied and ostracized at school have been saturating media headlines. But while these tales are making news, there’s another story to be told: that of homosexual teens’ estrangement—even banishment—from their families.

According to the recent Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS), one in four teens who identify themselves as lesbian or gay are homeless, and a study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) says that it’s more likely that these teens are being driven out of their homes by their parents. Supporting this are findings from studies of homeless youth living apart from their families. One such study shows that 73 percent of homeless gay and lesbian teens indicated that they were homeless because their parents disapproved of their sexual orientation. Full story »

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White House to host conference on bullying

by Tripp Underwood on March 10, 2011

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.

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A year on, what Phoebe Prince has taught us about bullying

by Claire McCarthy on February 1, 2011

Dr. Claire McCarthy is a primary care physician and the Medical Communications Editor at Children’s Hospital Boston. Take a look at her blog archive and follow her on Twitter @drClaire.

On January 14, 2010 15-year-old Phoebe Prince, who had been relentlessly bullied, hung herself in a closet.

She wasn’t the first child to die as a result of bullying. But there was something about her, and about her story, that caught the attention of the world. As the details of her bullying emerged, it seemed clear that her death could have been prevented. There were signs. People knew. But they either didn’t do anything—or they didn’t do the right things.

Phoebe’s story didn’t just cause sadness. It caused outrage. Enough is enough, people said. We can’t let children die. We need to do something. Full story »

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School refusal: A ‘sore throat’ or something more?

by Melissa Jeltsen on November 11, 2010

It’s time to get dressed for school and your daughter is giving you that sad face—again. “I don’t feel well,” she moans, although she was perfectly fine last night. When you try and convince her to get up, a look of sheer terror crosses her face. You’d let her stay home but this is the fifth time this month—and aside from her complaints, she’s not displaying any other symptoms. So what’s going on?

“School refusal, which affects around 4 percent of school-aged children, refers to a child who refuses to attend school and who identifies home as safer and more secure place,” says Jayne Singer, PhD, clinical psychologist in Children’s Hospital Boston’s Developmental Medicine Center. While it’s not unusual for children to make excuses to avoid going to school, when it becomes commonplace or even chronic, children risk falling behind in academics and social development. Full story »

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Food bullies

by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on October 7, 2010

A new study shows kids with food allergies are more likely to be bullied at school. Unfortunately, the findings were recently proven in Pennsylvania, where a student with a food allergy was threatened with an allergy provoking food. Joshua Feblowitz, a Thrive contributor who has lived with severe food allergies his whole life, comments on the study’s findings and offers advice to parents on how they can help protect their children from food bullies.

Joshua and his allergist, Lynda Schneider, MD

Having a child with food allergies poses challenges that go well beyond watching what he eats. Sometimes other kids (and adults) in your child’s life won’t understand food allergies; they may become overly anxious or not take the problem seriously enough. And sometimes, unfortunately, kids can be cruel. Bullies can use a victim’s food allergies to taunt, tease and even threaten.

A recent study, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, found that one in four children with food allergies has experienced some form of food-related bullying. This type of bullying becomes more common as kids get older, with over 50 percent of food allergic kids in grades 6-10 reporting an instance of food bullying. In one particularly disturbing case, a teenager was suspended from school and charged with assault after purposely smearing peanut butter on the forehead of a nut-allergic student. Full story »

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