There is a growing belief that young children should be involved in decisions that affect them. This belief has its foundations in a new model of the young child, in a new concern with young children's rights as citizens and in new knowledge about the significance of young children's early experiences. This article examines the increasing interest in involving young children in policy‐making and its rationale. It then presents two case studies from Australia of consulting young children in policy‐making, to show what consulting young children can offer children, policy‐makers and the wider community.

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This paper engages with questions of logic and its politics to explore how those of us in early childhood education can become critical consumers of 'brain research'. The research truths we use to construct classroom practices decide the meanings of our actions, thoughts and feelings and our interactions with children. Following Foucault (1980), I see these truths as intimately connected with power and its effects on us.The truths of 'brain research' have inundated early childhood education at an extraordinary pace in recent years and the recent 'Learning Brain Down Under Expo' in South Australia which attracted over 700 educators offers us a timely opportunity to critically reflect on it and its effects. My critical reflections use the politics of logic contrasting the 'tree-like' logic of linear causality and rhizomatic logic (Delueze and Guattari 1987) to point to key questions that I hope other early childhood educators can use to critically reflect on the truths of 'brain research' and its meanings and effects in early childhood education.