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.