We have a Dora the Explorer and an Action Man in our bath. They have very different physiques, but both do pretty much the same job. Exploring, solving problems, having adventures. I read that Action Man has been 'beefed up' over the last 3 decades, and 1970s AM looks a bit weak compared to today's muscle bound hero.

Dora has not been around long enough to be changed, but does seem to be smiley and content with her dimensions. It is what she does that matters, not what she looks like.

On Tuesday, H came home from school telling me that one of the GGG girls had called her a rude word and the teaching assistant had taken H to her class to get the girl to apologise. I was worried to ask what the word was. But I did. It was 'fat'. I wanted to kill the girl in question for calling my beautiful girl fat, it really is a rude word in my world too. I reel still from the damage done when someone I didn't know (a helper on a Brownie camp, I was 7) said to another leader over my head that it was appropriate that I was in the Heffalump six, as I was a bit of a Heffalump. So, this is a raw issue for me, who was one of those girls with 'puppy fat'. I HATE THAT TERM!

My immediate reaction to H should have been to ask her what she thought of that - hey - haven't read all those Steve Biddulph books for nothing - but I didn't. I blurted out 'But you are beautiful!' To which she replied 'yeah, I know'. Hope she does. I had another conversation a few weeks ago about whether you could over encourage your children and build too much their self esteem - the friend of a friend had said that she would rather dampen down too much self esteem than work on repairing broken or non existent. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Of course in raising this thorny issue I have put myself out there to have arrows thrown - from the last paragraph, my world view would seem to suggest you cannot be fat AND beautiful at the same time. Whoa. As Staci would say. Not sure about any of this, just chucking it out as my reaction to a very normal thing that happened, maybe you would like to comment and help me refine my thinking. Can't help but think that it is my esteem that was more crushed by the comment to H than hers, from this viewpoint right now. And wondering what God wants to say to me through this episode.

God have mercy on my children. They need you so much!