She’s 5, and she’s a brave, tough little cookie. But this morning, she has mainly been breaking my heart.

She hurt herself yesterday at school, a really nasty gash on her finger. But no tears. We cleaned it up. We bandaged it up gently. I reminded her that it was ok to cry if she was hurting. She said she was ok, and that her eyes just didn’t need to cry.

But this morning… When we said that she needed to keep the bandage on her finger to protect it, she burst into tears. Wailing. She didn’t want to keep it on. She wanted to rip it off. Or not go to school at all because of it. And this is a girl who has cried before at the thought of missing a day of school when she was properly ill.

And she said she didn’t want it on because it would make her look weird. And that broke my heart. Where on earth did that come from?