President Barack Obama confessed being bullied as a kid
“Bullying isn’t a problem that makes headlines every day, but every day it touches the lives of people all across the country,” Mr Obama said, noting a growing movement among young people to combat youth harassment.
The US President Barack Obama confessed that he was taunted as a kid over his “big ears” and unusual name, as he opened a White House summit on preventing bullying.
“If there is one goal of this conference, it is to dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up,” Mr Obama said as he opened the conference.
“It’s not. Bullying can have destructive consequences for our young people.”
The White House said nearly a third of schoolchildren or 13 million students are bullied each year. It said targeted students are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and have mental health issues.
It is encouraging schools and the private sector to join efforts against bullying and is highlighting private, non-profit and government prevention efforts.
Mr Obama, who has written of his own sometimes difficult childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, said as he opened the conference that he had experience being on the receiving end of taunts.
“As adults, we all remember what it was like to see kids picked on in the hallways or in the schoolyard.
“I have to say with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune. I didn’t emerge unscathed.”
First Lady Michelle Obama noted several high profile cases that have made media headlines that have seen kids driven to distraction and even suicide after they were severely bullied.
“As parents it breaks our hearts to think that any child feels afraid every day in the class room, or on the playground or even online,” she said.
“It breaks our hearts to think about any parent losing a child to bullying,” Michelle Obama said, at an event which included several families grieving after their offspring committed suicide following harassment at school.
Article from: The Telegraph