Contemporary considerations of childhood research ethics recognize children’s competence and agency, their rights to be informed about research, and their capabilities to negotiate participation. There is also a recognition of children’s assent as on-going and formed in the relationship with the researcher. Drawing on two different data sets, we investigate information and assent as they appear in child-researcher, child-child and child-parent interactions. We argue for the need to pay attention to participants’ own meaning-making with regard to informed assent, and show how the presence or non-presence of the researcher in data collection may affect information and assent.