Here is another story written by my wife and myself. Kind of appropriate as school is starting ans, unfortunately, so does the bullying. Please share this with parents with kids at risk*
Jeff was a child who loved to eat(.) He ate while reading, watching TV and even talking on the phone. His family was kind of big (,) so he naturally fit in pretty well. As a smaller kid most folks thought it was kind of cute .
When he started school, most everyone didn’t think much about it.
Then, in the 4th grade his dad got a new job that he said would make everyone in the house so much happier because they could have and do so much more. The trouble is they had to move to another city. Jeff at first didn’t like the idea at all. He was going to have to leave all his friends and meet all new people, make new friends and meet new teachers who didn’t know him. He wasn’t shy, but this was all new to him. For the first time, he really felt stress. He found a way to deal with this new stress: he ate more and it seemed to help.
In school, his eating habit increased a lot. Jeff ate his lunch and then ate more in the snack area. Even in between the classes he sometimes ate, hiding food from the teacher eating in class. This became a very bad habit. Whenever other kids teased him because of his weight, he felt stressed, and ate more food. Jeff’s food choices weren’t the best. He chose cheese snacks, chips, sweets, chocolates, just about anything that you would find in a snack room machine. He did this nearly every day. Naturally, he really started to gain more weight.
So much that his clothes started becoming tighter and tighter over the months.
There was an annual Sports Competition Day held at his school. Jeff never did like running because he got tired pretty quickly and didn’t really like any type of exercise. However, the school had made it mandatory this year. Every student had to take part in at least one event. Jeff thought a lot to take the event that included the least physical activity. So, he took part in a fun event, the pie walk race. This event was right up his alley, participants had to eat a small pie and then walk fast without dropping the pie. Almost all the kids in the race were heavier than other children at the school so Jeff felt he was in an event he could keep up in.
In the coming days, Jeff’s eating just grew worse, and his grades were starting to suffer too. At home, his mother saw that he was really gaining weight because his clothes were not fitting, she tried to change the way they ate at breakfast and dinner. As a result, Jeff even started sneaking food from home and ate it on the way to school.
All through 4th grade, his classmates continued taunting him and making fun of him. They even had a code word for him- The Hippo Boy. One day, the school district had a height and weight test for the whole 4th grade class in every school in the district. Jeff thought, “I am the probably the heaviest in the whole class and if it turns out to be true, “I will die of embarrassment because everyone in the school will know it for sure.” They will tease him even more. So, the day of the height –weight test he made an excuse to his mom that he was feeling too sick to go to school and stayed home. He pretended to be sick and slept whole day, feeling he had gotten away with not being weighed. He went to school the next day, and to his horror, he found that the testing was postponed and height and weight measurements would be taken that day. Jeff became really upset and kept on making excuses to the teacher about being sick, he was so stressed now that he really did get sick, and she sent him home. He was happy but also guilty that he had lied to escape the test. To relieve his guilt, he ate more food that he had been hiding from his mom at home.
- In the 5th grade this year too, Sports Competition started. Jeff searched in the list of events to find an event like the Pie walk that he did last year so at least he might be able to do something that he might be able to win. But there was no such race this year. Jeff thought hard to find some excuse and skip the competition altogether. He went to the teacher and said to her that he had headache. But this teacher said, “Don’t make excuses Jeff, last year you won the pie walk, you have to try another event,” Jeff sat disappointed knowing that he would come last in the race.
The bell rang and as he left class he said to his friend, Bobby, who he had met last year was a little overweight “Bobby. Listen, if you will run with me and let me keep up, then I will let you copy my homework.” Bobby said okay. Jeff felt very relieved because even though his grades were not what they were before he came to this school, he was still doing okay.
Race day came and he and Bobby lined up for the race.
The race started. Everyone started off kind of at a slow pace, but the others started running faster and faster. All moved ahead of Jeff and Bobby in few seconds. Only Jeff and Bobby were running behind. For one lap, Bobby stayed with Jeff as he said he would… but in the second, and last lap, Bobby said to Jeff, “I can’t run this slow. The crowd is laughing at me.”
Jeff said, panting, “You can’t break your word,” and Jeff cried “This is the last lap.” But Bobby didn’t hear him. He took off. Now Jeff was all alone running far behind everyone else. He wanted to die, everyone was pointing at him and making more fun than he had ever heard before. This race couldn’t end fast enough. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes like an hour to him. Then he heard a voice from the crowd which said, “Hey, Hippo kid isn’t running, he is waddling.” Hearing this, Jeff felt heart-broken. He stumbled and he twisted his ankle and he fell on the track.
Some teachers came and took him aside. They applied medicine on his leg but he was only thinking of the voice he heard just now. He felt no pain because he himself had pretended to twist his ankle to spare himself the embarrassment of being fat. It echoed in his mind(:)“The Hippo Kid.”
He came home and saw himself in the mirror thinking “Am I so fat?” The answer he gave himself was “YES!”
The next day, he made a deal with himself that he won’t eat food in the machine in the snack bar. But his classmates kept making fun of him, calling him the Hippo Kid every day, he started to eat even more to relieve his stress. At after school games, Jeff couldn’t run fast so he didn’t even try. In hide-n-seek, hiding for him was a joke. So, he stopped participation in physical activities at all to spare the embarrassment. Finally (,) his mom heard from other mothers about what was going on, because Jeff never let on about the terrible teasing. She advised Jeff to try to exercise even a little every day. He agreed to take their dog for longer walks. He walked to the library instead of having his mom drive him. He did what he promised but it didn’t seem to be working fast enough. He didn’t see the use in doing it.
Jeff did try to exercise but could not reduce his love for food. His classmates kept on bullying him and teasing him. Even classmates he didn’t know teased him.
Jeff at least went back to studying more to shut out the teasing as much as he could.
Jeff and the few friends he had, Bobby was no longer included, got ready for final exams.
After exam grades were posted, Jeff found out he did very well. As a reward for doing so well, His mom and dad surprised him with a trip to a camp that specialized in helping overweight kids deal with their weight and the problems that come with being very heavy. He was concerned that if someone found out he had been to a “fat camp” next year the teasing might even be worse. However his family were supporting him, in fact, it seemed they were the only ones who seemed to care, so he agreed to go.
It was only a few hours away, so his family could visit on weekend to see how he was doing. It also made being away from home a lot better. Everyone at the camp was pretty much in the same situation, so there was no teasing, only support. It was a really good experience and he learned from all the other kids at camp that he was not alone, so his stress became something he could deal with.
He started to lose (weight) through exercise and daily organized sports activities meant to build self-confidence. He learned how to eat better, healthier foods and snacks that he found he liked. He was becoming more pleased with himself and started to like what he saw in the mirror and what he thought about himself.
There were some classes everyone had to attend almost every day except weekends. These were not the type of classes he was used to. All they were for was to do talk about problems everyone had and how they had been dealing with them. The teacher who ran one particular class, they called them sessions, was really neat. He was old, he said he was 28 years old. He was a bit heavy too, in fact all the teachers and counsellors were kind of big. They had all had to deal with the same issues when they were growing up too.
This teacher talked about how we felt about ourselves now, instead of when we first got to camp. Then he asked about school and how we were treated, how we handled our own specific issues, or didn’t handle the teasing and in some cases the bullying.
It was, for Jeff, a real eye opener and he started to feel better about himself for the first time in a long time. Even before he changed schools. One day toward the end of camp the teacher had a session where he did most of the talking. It was an unusual session as he talked about how you feel about yourself, but this wasn’t about us. It was about the kids who made fun of us. It was simple, he said that many people who make fun of other people do it because the feel uncomfortable themselves about what they see in us that makes them want to tease us so they feel better about themselves. Many people see something in someone that bothers them and because of ignorance, fear of having the same problem or don’t know how to deal with it, they make fun of it. When the person being teased stands up for themselves, it makes them feel more afraid of what they can’t handle or don’t understand. It isn’t fair, but it can explain why you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself, especially if you are learning to deal with your own problem, like being overweight.
Jeff thought more about it and the last few sessions of camp dealt with this subject and many of the campers started to talk about it and started to become more self-confident and understood that there is a way to help yourself when you are being teased.
During the six weeks at camp (the) most amazing thing happened, slowly, but it happened. Jeff noticed his pants and shirts weren’t fitting as well as when he came to camp. They weren’t getting tighter, or smaller because of his weight loss at camp, they were actually getting shorter. He was also growing in height.
Nobody at school could have imagined what would happen after the summer was over and school started again. When Jeff came into homeroom, almost no one recognized him. Everyone was shocked to see him. Jeff didn’t look as fat as the school year ended for the 5th grade. He had grown taller and therefore looked a lot different.
Children who teased and bullied, who finally recognized him, were afraid that Jeff would take revenge for the way he was treated by them, but Jeff saw them, didn’t say a word and just smiled.
Now, Jeff had become the new buzz. Everyone wanted to know how Jeff looked the way he did, especially the girls. That was an issue he never had to deal with before, but he felt he might get used to it. Jeff told everyone that is was his own fault. His weight gain was from too much eating and way too little exercise. He admitted he didn’t feel very good about himself, but now he knew why and would continue with what he learned.
Jeff’s transformation worked as an inspiration for others. Other heavy children at the school (too) wanted to be like Jeff. He told them they could ask him any questions, any time.
One day, Bobby went to Jeff and said, not knowing what would happen, “Jeff. That day, I left you alone on the track. You must really hate me, I am sorry.”
Jeff replied, “No, Bobby. At first I never wanted to see you ever again let alone speak to you. I really want to thank you, because if you hadn’t done that, I would not have decided to lose the weight and learn about what I did and why I did it... But never do that to anyone else.”
Then Jeff told to his class, “I want to say one thing to all of you. We should never bully or tease others because of their height or weight. Teasing and bullying made me stressed and it took a lot of effort and help from my family and some smart people to beat my stress without eating. So, guys, be friendly with everyone, no one is perfect.”
Now Jeff participates in every athletic activity. He also has befriended and encouraged heavy children to play games and engage in other activities.
Illustrations by Karen Cortez for this story