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Mom Sues School for Causing Daughter’s Anorexia
A Pennsylvania school district accused by a mom of not stepping in to stop bullying against her daughter is now being sued – for causing her anorexia.
The unidentified mother says boys began harassing her daughter about her weight in sixth grade, and the trouble continued into the seventh. Lawsuit papers obtained by the AP charge the school with a failure to step in, even when approached by the girl’s mom, and her daughter ended up in a hospital for her severe weight loss.
A lawsuit against a school over failure to protect kids from bullying is nothing new – back in 2005 a teen in Kansas was awarded a quarter of a million dollars by a court that determined the school was to blame for him dropping out to escape torture from other kids. Late last year, the tony Miss Porter’s got slapped with a similar suit. And a set of Ohio parents is currently waging a legal battle over allegations that their gay son committed suicide because of unmitigated harrassment.
But never has a school been sued for causing an eating disorder, and experts who deal with eating disorders on a daily basis are skeptical. The head of the National Eating Disorders Association told the AP that people who develop anorexia usually have some underlying issues. Although bullying could play a role, it’s only part of the problem.
And those of us who have suffered from eating disorders know you don’t have to be called “fat” to feel it. A recovering bulimic, there was no specific instance when kids in my school made comments about my weight – it was enough to look around at girls much skinner than me, most of whom “got the guy” and feel unhappy with who I was.
But where the average person who wants to lose weight might feel unhappy before their goal is acheived, people with eating disorders do not reach a goal and feel sated. Our disease lies in a chemical disorder in the brain that causes us to approach weight loss with blinders toward the facts. At a healthy, even enviable weight, the picture we see in the mirror is vastly different from that a healthy person sees. We still see fat. And no amount of positive feedback from other people is going to change that. In that sense, negative reinforcement in the form of bullying could exacerbate an already bad situation.
Experts have largely been mystified by the “cause” of eating disorders. As one psychiatrist told me during my early stages of recovering, it was impossible to tell if my depression caused my bulimia or if I was depressed because of my body dysmorphic issues.
With a lack of medical expertise and only the briefest bit of information on the case, we can’t weigh in on whether bullying CAUSED this girl’s anorexia or not. But is it fair to say that a school can stop a girl from feeling like she’s too fat?
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Bec commented on Aug 21 09 at 10:30 amNo. It’s reasonable to say that the school did not adequately respond to her requests for their help with the bullying, but not that they are responsible for her sense of self esteem. We need a better way to handle bullying; something more effective than lawsuits.
Bunny commented on Aug 21 09 at 1:15 pmWait a sec – it’s not enough that the kid was brutally bullied, they have to prove that the bullying caused her anorexia to prove that the school district was negligent? A school district that allows bullying is negligent by definition. Maybe lawsuits aren’t the way to solve it, but I can’t say I feel sorry for them for getting called on failing to protect children.
I also call BS on the dismissal of societal forces in causing eating disorders. If they were just a quirk of brain chemistry, then you would see anorexia and bulimia all throughout history. It’s modern society’s insistence on thinness that is causing an epidemic of women starving themselves, and nearly all American women have some pretty toxic anxieties around food.
Knitty commented on Aug 21 09 at 2:45 pm“But is it fair to say that a school can stop a girl from feeling like she’s too fat?”
It can (and has an obligation) to stop a vicious little bully from making a child’s life hell. The lawsuit isn’t saying “the school” triggering her ED, it’s saying that the school failed to protect her from harm, as it damn well should have.
Rebecca commented on Aug 23 09 at 11:30 amThe school should have stepped up, it sounds like this wasn’t a small amount of bullying.
On the other hand, if the mother knew it was this bad why didn’t she pull the child from school sooner? It is a pain to homeschool or switch schools mid-year, but it can be done (even when officials lie and say it can’t be. we had to have a meeting with the superintendent).
Teens are so sensitive, we have to respond to these kind of things quickly. I went through something similar in high school, when a boy called me fat (literally no one had ever called me fat to my face before) so I stopped eating. I was on the higher side of normal, and ended up losing 30 pounds because I would eat one small meal a day or less. There were times when I would eat 2 poptarts over the course of two days, and that was it. It was unhealthy and stupid (and I’ve never considered myself a sensitive person). My parents sat me down and we talked about it. They explained that if I wanted to eat healthy, that was fine, but I had to eat to do that! While I got over it pretty quickly I also wasn’t being teased daily, it was just the one time.
CJ99 commented on Aug 23 09 at 5:01 pm“It’s modern society’s insistence on thinness that is causing an epidemic of women starving themselves”
Hello: 1980 is on the phone and wants you to pay it royalties for using its tired lament thirty years later. Look around you. Thin lost to fat a long time ago. The only “epidemic” in America is eating. If there is organized “societal pressure,” it’s called low wages, ignorance and lack of control — the ingredients in America’s sagging gut.
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