School Bullying

Bullying still goes on is school but who they target may surprise you.

So, who's getting bullied the most?

It's obese and overweight kids. And the surprising thing is that this hasn't changed much in the last few decades even though the number of obese and overweight children has skyrocketed over the same time period.

A new study, published in the journal "Pediatrics" looked at third graders to find out who was bullied the most. Bullying has been around as long as schools have been around but more attention to it is going on now because of some deaths and suicides related to bullying.

Researchers found that regardless of race, family income or whether they were boys or girls, being overweight meant a child's chances of bullying went up. As a matter of fact, being overweight meant a child's chances of getting bullied were over 60 percent higher than their classmates. They report parents of obese kids rate bullying as their top health concern and children that are bullied do suffer more depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Although the researchers do admit there is no simple solution to this issue, experts hope one simple step will be that parents and other adults start to model good behavior by not making negative comments about other people's weight. This, along with schools focusing on the problem of bullying, will hopefully go a long way to stopping this age old problem.