Two-fifths of seven to ten-year-olds think they are not pretty enough

Amelia Woodley reckons she needs to lose a bit of weight. She has just had one of those moments when she caught sight of herself in the mirror at a bad angle. Her tummy looked enormous. She won't enjoy her dinner now.

She'll be sulkily pushing her potatoes around the plate, asking her mum for a smaller portion of pudding and hoping it won't lead to concerned looks or lectures.

Upstairs in her bedroom, meanwhile, the carpet is covered in discarded clothes. She must have changed her outfit 20 times today and still can't find anything to suit her.

Amelia Woodley (pictured above with her mother Lauren Woodley) reckons she needs to lose a bit of weight. She has just had one of those moments when she caught sight of herself in the mirror at a bad angle

She'll try to tidy it up later, in time for friends coming over. They will spend all their time talking about fashion trends and trying out different looks and make-up on each other, commenting on who looks 'hottest'.

They would all love abs like pop princess Taylor Swift and agree that singer Ariane Grande's legs are to die for.

While Amelia may sound like a typical teenager, in fact she is just seven years old and skinny as a whippet.

No wonder her mother Lauren, a 29-year-old legal assistant from Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, is worried.

'It's all kicking in so early,' she says. 'I thought she'd be much older before I'd have to deal with this. But yesterday, Amelia grabbed her stomach and said: 'Look, Mummy. I've got all this fat.'

'I replied, 'No, sweetheart. That's just your skin. Without that, you wouldn't be able to move around and twist your body.'

'At other times she is sad because she says when she grows up no one will want to marry her because she is ugly, and she needs to wear make-up. It's terrifying.'

Amelia may only be in Year 2 of primary school and years away from puberty, but the latest girls' attitudes survey by Girlguiding UK reveals that she is far from unusual in having depressingly adult preoccupations.

While Amelia may sound like a typical teenager, in fact she is just seven years old and skinny as a whippet. No wonder mother Lauren, a 29-year-old legal assistant from Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, is worried

According to the research, published this month, there has been a sharp fall in girls' body confidence, with children as young as seven riddled with doubts about their looks.

About two-fifths — 38 per cent — of seven to ten-year-olds think they are not pretty enough. Astonishingly, almost a quarter say they feel they need to be perfect, while 15 per cent report that they feel embarrassed or ashamed by the way they look.

Yet given that most girls in this age group, including Amelia, don't have their own smartphones and are not yet comparing themselves on social media, why are they suffering such a crisis of confidence?

For me, the most shocking aspect of this sad phenomenon is that the age at which it begins has plunged in just a few short years.

BODY BLUES In a survey, 42 per cent of girls and young women said the worst thing about being female was pressure to look good Advertisement

When I wrote the book Where's My Little Girl Gone? on this subject in 2011, the concerns were about 11 and 12-year-olds, which was bad enough.

Yet here we are, five years on, with concern sharply focused on girls five years younger than that.

The erosion of her eldest daughter's childhood has come as a wake-up call for Lauren. The mum-of-three, who is married to Kevin, an installation manager, says: 'I've never mentioned the word 'diet' in front of Amelia.'

Lauren has also been careful never to criticise her own body or looks in front of her daughter, or to censure what she eats.

Yet still, years away from her first kiss, Amelia worries that she is not pretty or slim enough to attract boys or be accepted by other girls.

According to the research, published this month, there has been a sharp fall in girls' body confidence, with children as young as seven riddled with doubts about their looks

'When she wanted a pamper party for her birthday, where the guests are treated to beauty and massage treatments — these parties are popular with many girls her age — I managed to divert her into a pottery-painting party instead,' says Lauren.

But while she still has control over party themes, playdates are another story.

A generation ago, girls would have been playing with dolls and skipping ropes. Nowadays they want to do makeovers on each other and dress up like their favourite pop stars.

Lauren says: 'Little girls her age don't want to climb trees, play in the mud or run around any more. They think playing with a skipping rope is babyish. They only want to do so-called 'big girl' activities.'

But these big girl activities — which revolve around fashion and make-up — have given Amelia a self-consciousness that means she looks at her tummy and limbs with a critical eye.

'It was a year ago that she looked in the mirror and told me she thought she was fat,' says Lauren.

'Immediately I said: 'That couldn't be further from the truth. You've got no lumps or bumps.' Yet she will try to ask for smaller portions if she thinks she needs to lose weight.

Mother-of-two Lucy Wray, from Grantham in Lincolnshire, pictured above with daughter Darcey, says she has always tried to emphasise kindness and intelligence as the most important qualities in people

'I can't dismiss how she feels because it's not a temper tantrum that you should ignore. These feelings are very real to her.'

Children aged between two and 11 see an average of 25,600 ads a year on the internet and TV, according to research by the media monitoring group Common Sense media.

A huge proportion of these will contain some images of female perfection — on top of the images of highly sexualised females that they are free to watch around the clock on YouTube.

Where once there was a watershed that separated programming appropriate for children and adults, now youngsters can watch anything at any time.

The result is that they are exposed to more images of female perfection in a week than previous generations of children saw in a year.

Only now is Lauren noticing such influences: 'It's on the advertising billboards when we go out; it's what they hear talked about in the playground, where they call each other pretty or ugly.

'It's in the lyrics of their favourite pop songs, when they hear Little Mix say they want a potion to make boys fall in love with them.

About two-fifths - 38 per cent - of seven to ten-year-olds think they are not pretty enough

'They think they are supposed to look like the skinny models they see everywhere. But that's simply impossible because they have seven-year-old bodies.'

Meanwhile, the boundaries around childhood continue to be eroded.

When we were growing up, we probably came home to a strictly prescribed diet of children's TV from 4pm to 6pm, featuring programmes such as Blue Peter.

Even a decade ago, most children's TV revolved around CBeebies and similar channels. Then the TV was turned off and children went away to play.

Nowadays they are allowed to find their own programmes whenever they want on YouTube, where Peppa Pig episodes sit alongside music videos and blogs of teenage girls giving make- up tutorials.

Even the programmes aimed at their age group give a distorted impression of what it should mean to be female.

According to a study in the Journal Of Children And Media, 87 per cent of girls aged between ten and 17 who appear on the Nickelodeon and Disney children's channels can be classed as underweight. Another study found that heavier characters on children's TV programmes are more likely to be the butt of jokes and to be seen as unpopular and unattractive.

Lucy says: 'If you ask our daughter Darcy what makes someone beautiful, she will say beauty is something you find on the inside. Yet in the kitchen one morning before school, she looked down at her stomach and told me she was worried it stuck out too much'

Psychologist Deanne Jade, founder of the National Centre for Eating Disorders, says part of the problem is that in a world where children are given iPads and iPhones for entertainment — and also to keep them quiet — they are growing up in an increasingly visual society.

Deanne says: 'Seven is about the age when children start to evaluate themselves. It's also the age when they start to work out what their ideals are.

'For some this will lead to 'beauty and the beast thinking' in which they will see images of the tiniest waists, like the latest Disney princess, and think their own perfectly proportioned tummies are not acceptable by comparison.'

For mothers trying to do the best for their daughters, it can be a shattering blow to hear these messages hit home.

Mother-of-two Lucy Wray, from Grantham in Lincolnshire, says she has always tried to emphasise kindness and intelligence as the most important qualities in people.

Lucy, 34, who lives with her partner Simon, a merchandising manager for a furniture company, says: 'If you ask our daughter Darcy what makes someone beautiful, she will say beauty is something you find on the inside.

'Yet in the kitchen one morning before school, she looked down at her stomach and told me she was worried it stuck out too much.

'It turned out she had overheard some of the older girls in her school gymnastics class the day before. They could only have been about eight or nine, yet they were talking admiringly about another girl's flat stomach. In her seven-year-old mind, Darcy immediately thought: 'Hold on, my tummy doesn't look like that.'

Lucy notices that her playdates used to be about fancy dress and now they have started to be about finding 'cute' outfits'

'When you hear a child say something like that, it is heart-breaking because as a mother you feel everything about them is perfect, inside and out.

'Darcy looks the way a seven-year-old is supposed to look. There is not an inch of fat on her, but she is already turning the criticism on herself. If she is on a playdate, she will come down with make-up all over her face. I have said to her 'Do you think you look nice with make-up?' and she says she does.

'Her playdates used to be fancy dress. Now they have started to be about finding 'cute' outfits.'

So endemic is the problem that schools are employing specialists to talk about body image with pupils. One of them is former teacher Chris Calland, co-author of the book Body Image In The Primary School.

Chris says: 'We now hear of nursery-age children talking about their 'fat legs' and saying they can't wear leggings.

'They don't need to be on phones or social networks to get these ideas. They only have to see ads and watch TV — particularly reality TV like The Only Way Is Essex, which follows the lives of looks-obsessed twentysomethings.'

Chris adds that parents, who have also been sucked in by the values of our appearance-obsessed culture, also need to 'tone down their own anxiety about food, fuelled by panic about rising childhood obesity and the new 'clean eating' craze.

'Parents are only trying to do their best in wanting their children to be healthy, but sometimes they are not getting it quite right.

Actress Emma, 33, from South London, pictured above with her daughter Kayla, says: 'Kayla was distraught when she was playing in the park and a boy her age called her ugly. He also called her fat. She really took it to heart'

'They will come up at the end of a session and say 'I found chocolate wrappers in my child's school bag' as if it's the end of the world.

'Once you raise that anxiety about food and create guilt around it, then it becomes a treadmill.'

On top of that, Chris says, children are becoming even more self-conscious about their bodies due to school weighing programmes designed to catch youngsters who are already overweight.

Parents also need to help their children question what they see.

'It's not too soon to ask seven-year-olds if the people they know really look like the ones they see on screen. It's already possible to have age-appropriate conversations about self-esteem, which is really what body confidence is all about.

'It's an explosion that's happening, but we are way behind it. Their self-esteem at eight has been found to be a predictor in whether they will have eating disorders at around the ages of 14 and 15.'

Indeed, Emma Johnson believes that is one of the factors in her seven-year-old daughter Kayla's recent spate of panic attacks.

Actress Emma, 33, from South London, says: 'Kayla was distraught when she was playing in the park and a boy her age called her ugly. He also called her fat. She really took it to heart.

She says Kayla has already said she doesn't like the tops of her legs and believes that she needs a full face of make-up to look pretty

'She has always been an anxious, clingy child, but it got worse after that incident. She would cling on to me whenever I had to leave to go to work. I just couldn't work out what was going on, until I made the connection.'

Kayla, she says, had already said she 'doesn't like' the tops of her legs and believes that she 'needs' a full face of make-up to look pretty.

'Kayla wants to wear the whole lot — lipstick, mascara and foundation. Even though I said no, a family friend gave her a kit and she spends her time practising with it.

'It breaks my heart to watch her. She's only a seven-year-old child!'

Yet to confiscate her favourite 'toy', Emma believes, would only drive Kayla's obsession with her looks underground.

All she can do is try to distract her and help her enjoy more childish pursuits.

It's an uphill battle, though. Walk down the aisles of a large toy retailer such as Toys 'R' Us and you could easily get the impression that our girls' bright eyes and perfect complexions are in urgent need of improvement.

There you will find everything from the Disney Frozen cosmetic case to the Monster High We Are Monsters make-up belt — recommended for over-threes).

Former primary school head Sue Palmer, the author of Toxic Childhood, says parents must fight back and not allow children to slip into having adult preoccupations.

'Everything is available to children at a very young age, but we have lost our sense of what is age-appropriate,' she says.

'Adult-like behaviour and fashion are becoming normalised at ever earlier ages.

Emma says: 'It breaks my heart to watch her. She's only a seven-year-old child!'

'The whole point of childhood is to give youngsters the time to work out who they are and grow into themselves.

'They should be out playing, learning about themselves and what they can do, which is what biology intended.

'They may look more grown-up on the surface, but in terms of emotional development, they are behind children their age 20 years ago. The knock-on effect can be seen in the burgeoning mental health problems we are seeing among children and teenagers.'

Now the first generation of girls who grew up too soon are becoming young adults, Sue fears we are already starting to see the result of not letting our daughters grow up in their own time.

The latest Girlguiding report was published just days after it was revealed that young women aged 16 to 24 are the highest risk group in England for mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, according to new data from NHS Digital.

For mothers of girls waging a constant battle for their daughters' childhood, it is an uphill struggle.

Lauren says: 'Amelia says she wants to look sexy, but what she means is she wants to look pretty.

'When I hear her say these things, I think: 'Oh dear God, what do I do now?' If she has no confidence when she's seven, what will her life be like when she's grown up?'