Mother Shares Heartfelt Story of Her Son Being Bullied so Much He Stopped Eating

Mother Shares Heartfelt Story of Her Son Being Bullied so Much He Stopped Eating
Children walk past a School Bus in Monterey Park, Calif., on April 28, 2017. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Jane Werrell
10/21/2017
Updated:
10/23/2017

When Liam O'Brien entered seventh grade, he was a happy child. He played soccer, met with his friends at Seventh Street and loved food.

But as winter came things took a turn for the worse for Liam.

His mother, Deirdre O'Brien wrote a heartfelt post on Facebook about Liam, that’s now been shared over 1,500 times since it first appeared on Wednesday, Oct. 18.

“My beautiful son Liam turned 13 years old on September 8. He should be in school with his friends getting excited about high school and playing soccer, but he is not. He is at a medical center in Princeton NJ being treated for depression and an eating disorder,” she wrote in the post.

Diedre from Long Island, New York, explained the extent of the bullying, that eventually triggered Liam into not eating.

“Two kids told him he sucked and shouldn’t have made the team. There were unnecessary pushes and kicks. He was told he was weird, he was fat, his freckles were weird, his eyebrows were weird. They used horrible language and called him nasty words. I asked him how often it happened. He looked at me crying and said, ‘Everyday Mom’.”

She explained how she noticed things were not quite right when her son gave her back his iPhone. “Too much drama Mom,” he said.

Liam then started to spending time with his parents at home and not with his friends. She checked in with Liam to find out if anything was wrong. He just said everything was fine.

On his birthday, he came back home with a bruise on his face. He told his mother that he had an accident.

His main passion was soccer, and he played every day, taking his soccer ball everywhere he went. But one day he was punched in the face on the way to the bus for school. He then didn’t pick up his soccer ball and started to lose weight and the doctor found that he had lost around 10 pounds since June.

But the school couldn’t find evidence that the bullying happened. Garden City Middle School investigated and returned with their findings this week. They said Liam’s complaints were “unfounded.”

She ended the post by writing, “I want Liam’s story to be heard.”

His mother recently tweeted a poster that encourages children who are bullied to talk about how it affects them.

The family explained to PIX11 how shocked they were by the bullying.

“These particular kids said your life is a waste, why don’t you just go kill yourself,” Liam’s father Keith O'Brien, told the news station. “How does a 12-year-old say that to another 12-year-old?

“I look back at the signs of bullying and he had every one of them,” Deirdre said. “I never thought he’d be the type to be bullied.”