About a month ago, my 5-year-old daughter asked me, with great earnestness, which weighed more — me, or a house. Nearly eight months pregnant, I understood where her question was coming from and answered her as seriously as I could. “A house,” I said solemnly.

“That’s what I thought,” she said and moved on to some other equally stimulating subject.

Last week, Kira’s line of questioning got a tad more direct.

“Why,” she asked me as I got dressed to go out for dinner, “is your butt getting so big?”

Before I answered, I reminded myself how lucky I am that despite my many flaws, a conflicted body image is not one of them. Kira’s question reflected the reality of what happens during the last few weeks of a pregnancy — especially one in which a slice of pizza has been a daily fixture.

Kira’s astute observations reminded me of the sharp eyes that grace my daughter and thousands of other savvy young girls across the city. My oldest son at Kira’s age didn’t even notice I was pregnant until my husband and I told him the news — and by then, I was just a few months away from delivering.

When it comes to noticing certain kinds of details, boys and girls are different. And whether or not we want to admit it, so too are our responses to certain kinds of parenting issues. Again and again, I hear parents worrying about their daughters’ weight. Their boys might be just as chunky, if not more so — but it is not our pleasantly plump boys that we worry about.

What I find disturbing is that these parents don’t have teenagers, or even pre-adolescents. These girls aren’t even in middle school yet, and plenty of them — believe it or not — are in nursery school. Wonderful, well-meaning, otherwise balanced parents are genuinely worrying about the tummies and tushies of 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old girls.

“Look at her belly hanging out,” a friend said to me about her chunky 4-year-old daughter recently. “Any ideas on how I can get her to stop eating? If she had it her way, she’d eat all day long. I know I’m not supposed to make an issue of food, but still, I can’t help but worry. My boys wouldn’t notice if I didn’t feed them for a few days. Of course they’re the ones who are so skinny.”

I’m not naïve — I understand my friend’s concern. We might live in a country in which obesity is on the rise, but we live in a city where many women wear not just a size 0, but — thanks to some fashionable labels — a double 00. Of course, we don’t want our daughters battling eating disorders. But we also know that being healthy (and trim) requires discipline. And let’s face it — it’s not easy being an overweight woman in New York. “It takes all my effort not to freak out when the size 7 jeans I just bought my daughter don’t even make it over her thighs,” a mother of three admitted. “She is 5 years old. What the hell is wrong with me?”

Many parents I spoke to mentioned that their young daughters love watching television programs such as “Hannah Montana,” “Zoey 101,” as well as the ubiquitous “High School Musical,” in which skinny stars are standard fare.

“Now that my daughter, who is 6, has begun to watch these shows, she says things like ‘Doesn’t this shirt make me look thin?’ and ‘Look at my big belly — I look like I’m pregnant,'” another mother of three said. “Of course, I try to focus on healthy eating and exercise for everyone in our house, but my husband and many people in his family are overweight. I worry that she has his genes.”

Many mothers mentioned that they will not bring up the issue of weight, but instead focus on being healthy. “I try to teach both my kids — a girl and a boy — that our bodies should be strong,” a mother of two said. “I try to emphasize that it’s important to be active and that too much junk food is unhealthy. I am very aware that I don’t want my daughter to feel self-conscious about her body.”

One mother of four said that when her eldest daughter went through an awkward heavy phase, the mother forced herself to not say anything. “When my daughter was 8 or 9, she was so chunky, I couldn’t stand it,” the mother said. “But a few years later, she looked totally different, thin and confident, and I hadn’t said a thing — thank God. Now I know for my younger daughters, too, how important it is to keep my mouth shut.”

This is exactly what the professionals say: It’s dangerous to make weight an issue with young girls. Help your child focus on being healthy and getting a lot of exercise. Try to remember that most girls go through a plump phase at some point. And, if you think that phase begins at 4 years old, it might take a few more years than you would like for it to pass.

sarasberman@aol.com