This piece is a collective exploration by seven doctoral researchers in Child Studies, who discuss notions of listening to children and young people in a Swedish context. We approach different aspects of listening in research and in practices such as education, psychiatry, and social work. The discussions in this collective writing are an invitation for continuous reflections about the contexts where listening to children is done, its challenges and possibilities.

Separate leisure spaces play an important part in children with disabilities everyday geographies, though little is known about how they are designed and organised or how children use them. This article contributes to the field of disabled childrens geographies (cf. Ryan, Sara. 2005. "People Dont do odd, do They? Mothers Making Sense of the Reactions of Others Towards Their Learning Disabled Children in Public Places." Childrens Geographies 3 (3): 291-305) by building on a three-year ethnographic study that explores a separate leisure space in Sweden for children (3-11 years) with disabilities such as ADHD and autism. The current article focuses on the calm room within the facility, aimed at providing space for preventing and handling children acting out. By analysing this particular room, the study illuminates the ideas and assumptions about the children that went into designing the separate leisure space. Two dimensions of the room are analysed: (i) the design of the room, and (ii) childrens uses of the room.The analysis demonstrates that children used the room for their own purposes, for example for resting, socialising or playing. When childrens uses of the room conflicted with what designers had planned for, tensions arose between the ideas about childrens needs that informed the design of the room and what the children needed or wanted during their visits. This demonstrates the importance of not having too rigid ideas about children with disabilities needs when planning and designing separate leisure spaces. It is suggested that one way of ensuring that childrens actual needs and desires are considered, rather than those assumed or imagined by adult designers, is by finding ways to include children in the design and planning processes.

This method-focused article continues the discussion of how methodological challenges in research with children with disabilities can be overcome. By examining the difficulties in introducing walk-and-talk conversations in an ethnographic study with young children (3-11 years) with disabilities, it asks what doing research with means and on whose terms research should take place. The article argues for a shift in the understanding of doing with, from a researcher-controlled research encounter to the focusing of childrens own activities. This ensures the participation of all children in research, by recognizing and listening to the many different ways in which children communicate.