There are all kinds of forms of discrimination in the world today, but we rarely associate it with children. Kids can be cruel to each other, but overweight children probably get it the worst. And in today’s supposedly enlightened and more sensitive society, adults are just as much the aggressor against obese children as their classmates.

Life is not easy for children that are overweight. They’re laughed at, joked about, treated differently by everyone, and are always encouraged to exercise more and change their diets. The sports world is also not immune to this form of discrimination, and that may be the most tragic of all.

In the case of little boys, being fat can make things miserable. In gym class, kids may not pick them for their kick ball, basketball, and soccer team because of their size. They are viewed as slow, and kids somehow are made to think that it is embarrassing to have the “fat kid” on their team. Little League coaches routinely bench kids that are overweight because they probably couldn’t run or move very fast.

If there is one sport that an overweight child can enjoy, it is football, but, unfortunately, they find a barrier there as well. In most states in the U.S., there are rules in Pop Warner and youth football leagues that participants cannot be over a certain weight or size. In Rhode Island, the Pop Warner leagues bar kids that are over a 170 pounds from playing because of safety issues. In theory, this is a good restriction that helps smaller children from getting injured by much bigger children of the same age, but there are some obvious facts that they have ignored.

In elementary school, boys are much less developed than girls, so they are usually of the same average height (between 4’5″ and 5’3″). The average weight of an elementary school boy is around 115 pounds. If you have an overweight child that is 5’0″ and 180 pounds, you have a kid who has probably not been able to play many sports before. Though bigger than the rest of the kids in terms of girth and weight, he is much more slow than his teammates. Also, they are just learning the proper techniques of blocking and hard-hitting tackles. Most overweight kids would not hurt their smaller counterparts, which leaves no good reason why they can’t play.

In a twist of irony, football players are encouraged to be bigger when they are of high school age, which leaves the overweight kids in another rut. Once they become freshmen in high school, those obese children can now learn the game they love, but the smaller players have a distinct advantage over them already by having much more experience playing. Many of the smaller kids are working on their speed and strength, as well as their endurance, while the overweight children are just learning how to do snap counts, perform proper blocking, and the right way to play the game. This seems very unfair given that these kids could have been learning how to play years earlier.

For anyone who has ever been or is overweight, life is not always easy. People are not always caring and kind, and that can be hard to take for children with that problem. Football is a sport where a young boy can attempt to mend his battered ego. Adults encourage overweight children to exercise more, but taking away that outlet is only hurting them even more.