THE average four-year-old asks 400 questions every day. Only 400? Are they sure? And what everlastingly patient soul did the counting?

Most of those questions begin with, or consist entirely of: "Why?" in response to the news that they're going to wear blue trousers or go to the shops or some other bit of ordinary life they think they might like to object to.

Others have us fighting to keep a straight face as we come up against the very basic workings of the four-year-old mind.

We still tease the offspring about her self-centredness at the questioning age, when she used up nearly a day's worth on a spinning world. Was the world going round all the time? It was. Did everything go round with it? Assured that it did, we were off - was the house going round, the trees, her swing ... the list seemed as if it would never end. Eventually it did, with the starkly logical: "Well, why don't I fall off?"

Explaining gravity to four-year-olds is a bit like pushing treacle uphill, so we promised her that people in general just didn't fall off. Honestly.

But asking 400 questions needs words, so that statistic sits oddly with reports of a worrying lack of language skills in three to five-year-olds arriving at nursery and infant school.

Families just don't talk to each another enough. Children are not used to conversation - and the demise of family meals is mentioned yet again.

In spite of a total lack of any instinctive maternal skills, I can't imagine not talking to even the smallest of babies, though I realised quite early in motherhood that some people didn't.

I would talk to this wide-awake, but still very small, baby in her pram as we walked along and get some very funny looks from passers-by (from the baby, too, at times, but I assumed that was just wind).

One mother of a similarly-aged baby asked me at the weekly clinic why I bothered talking when I got no answers.

Even if it's only "ups-a-daisy" or "skin a bunny" or any of the silly phrases which go with a baby's daily routine, it's talking. So what if there are no answers? So nothing. There will be one day and the scrap in your arms is a human being, due the courtesy of some acknowledgement.

The odd thing is that those who don't talk to a baby, because babies can't talk back, wouldn't think twice about talking to their dog or cat, even though "Who's a good boy, then?" isn't going to elicit a "Me!" from Rover at any age and the cat will merely look superior.

Granted, talking to your children can provide some nasty shocks, like the first time you hear the tones of your own voice ticking off a teddy bear, but not talking to them is depriving them of the most basic tool of existence, the power of communication. Not only do they not hear words, at first recognising them then trying to say them, but they don't latch on to the concept of question and answer or of giving and receiving information.

If, on top of that, they don't hear adults in the house talking to each other, maybe because there's only one adult around, language skills are even more in peril.

The lack of such skills now showing up means yet another task is being lined up for teachers and, heaven help us, a "think tank" has been considering the problem.

Surely it's far too late if children can't hold a simple conversation or recite some nursery rhymes by the time they reach infant school - and more than half of those starting at school know no rhymes.

The place to start is ante-natal classes, teaching the mothers-to-be why talking, reciting and singing (no baby is a critic) is so important. Teachers have more than enough to do already.