Opinion: To the point - A question of talking

'What did you think of your dinner?' I asked a small group of children the other day, as part of an effort to hear their views. There wasn't much response: one of the children said something like 'umm', and some others started looking for things they would rather be doing - anything other than talking to me.

I was trying to get some of the older children involved in the development of our new Community Kitchen, which is about healthier, fresher meals, growing more vegetables in the nursery garden, and involving parents. I was not doing very well, but I remembered this episode while I was reading some old, but still telling, research about talking with children in the nursery. Writing in 1980, David Wood noted how often adults seem to float by children and either say nothing, or nothing of much help ('that's lovely ...'). On other occasions, adults set up groups and other situations to focus conversation on something, and it almost always falls absolutely flat, producing uninterested and passive children - just like the four-year-olds who showed no enthusiasm for talking with me about their dinners.

Wood explains that the best way to start communication with young children is to attempt to 'tune in', spend time alongside them, and try to pitch conversation to match what they are doing and what they are interested in, building on shared experiences and knowledge if possible. The best conversation, in my experience, begins with companionship: being with a young child or a small group, joining in with what they are doing without taking over, and waiting. The current emphasis on consulting more with children is quite proper, but it seems to me that the dangers of innovative practice come when we focus on the fashionable and new, and forget what we have learned from experience.

My attempts to get the children to express their opinions about their dinner would have worked better if I had been less preoccupied with the idea of consultation and involvement. I should have thought more about successful ways to start and sustain conversation with them. It was when I asked one of the most talkative of our four-year-olds, 'How did you find your dinner?', that I knew the game was up. She looked at me in a rather intense way before replying, 'Easy - it was on my plate.'

- Julian Grenier is head of Kate Greenaway Nursery School and Children's Centre, London.