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This article discusses using concepts from various fields across general semiotics, to centralise children's abstract images in research. The aim is to move towards a natural semiotics – which accommodates the primordial, natural and universal dimensions of experience – that children connote through their 'out of this world' images. Natural semiotics is a term used to interrogate typical socio-cultural orientations towards meanings generated through signs. It is an approach to the co-interpretation of children's abstract images that appeals to emerging fields in semiotics and philosophical models which suggest the natural world as carrying intrinsic semantic value. Moving towards a natural semiotics carries potentials for co-interpreting children's 'out of this world' signs, in relation to situated and universal systems of meaning. When children cannot narrativise their experiences, symbols and other abstract imagery naturally emerge. A natural semiotics approach can be valuable for trying to figure out meanings behind children's creative, and at times, unknowable-yet-known data.

The 'new' sociology of childhood sees an emergence of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding self, experience and subjectivity of children. As debates frame research with children, concerned with 'ethics' and 'agency', what is meant by the 'subject' of experience is given little attention. In this article, I ask whether narratives are a true representation of 'self'; who is the 'experiencer' that stories refer to and what are the implications for claiming subjectivity through narrative structures? I suggest that 'experience' is an irreducible quality of reality that transcends personal self, and that a core subjectivity serves as the dative of experience, ' as natures sole ontological primitive. Understanding self, experience and subjectivity in line with an "Analytical Idealism"', offers fresh insight into current sociological debates in Childhood Studies.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore young researchers perspectives on children and young people's research, participation and protection.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper is co-authored by young people and academics involved in a young researcher group. This paper provides a brief introduction from the young researchers and some academic context to their work, then the young researcher group's contribution. Their contribution is followed by a brief discussion of the issues they raise in the light of current academic debate.


Findings
This paper contains our critical reflection on participation and protection.


Originality/value
The paper presents a unique contribution capturing children and young people's perspectives on the journal's theme and other contributions to it.