Child in the context of "Children's playground"

A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology, the term is the anglicisation of rite de passage, a French term innovated by the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his work Les rites de passage, The Rites of Passage. The term is now fully adopted into anthropology as well as into the literature and popular cultures of many modern languages.

Developmental psychology is the scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire lifespan. Developmental psychologists aim to explain how thinking, feeling, and behaviors change throughout life. This field examines change across three major dimensions, which are physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development. Within these three dimensions are a broad range of topics including motor skills, executive functions, moral understanding, language acquisition, social change, personality, emotional development, self-concept, and identity formation.

Developmental psychology explores the influence of both nature and nurture on human development, as well as the processes of change that occur across different contexts over time. Many researchers are interested in the interactions among personal characteristics, the individual's behavior, and environmental factors, including the social context and the built environment. Ongoing debates in regards to developmental psychology include biological essentialism vs. neuroplasticity and stages of development vs. dynamic systems of development. While research in developmental psychology has certain limitations, ongoing studies aim to understand how life stage transitions and biological factors influence human behavior and development.

Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual or spiritual event.

In the past, and in some societies today, such a change is often associated with the age of sexual maturity (puberty), especially menarche and spermarche. In others, it is associated with an age of religious responsibility.

Laughter is a typically pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, usually audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter can rise from such activities as being tickled, or from humorous stories, imagery, videos or thoughts. Most commonly, it is considered an auditory expression of a number of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness or relief. On some occasions, however, it may be caused by contrary emotional states such as embarrassment, surprise, or confusion such as nervous laughter or courtesy laugh. Age, gender, education, language and culture are all indicators as to whether a person will experience laughter in a given situation. Other than humans, some other species of primate (chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) show laughter-like vocalizations in response to physical contact such as wrestling, play chasing or tickling.

Laughter is a part of human behavior regulated by the brain, helping humans clarify their intentions in social interaction and providing an emotional context to conversations. Laughter is used as a signal for being part of a group—it signals acceptance and positive interactions with others. Laughter is sometimes seen as contagious and the laughter of one person can itself provoke laughter from others as a positive feedback.

In biology, offspring are the young creation of living organisms, produced either by sexual or asexual reproduction. Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny. This can refer to a set of simultaneous offspring, such as the chicks hatched from one clutch of eggs, or to all offspring produced over time, as with the honeybee. Offspring can occur after mating, artificial insemination, or as a result of cloning.

Human offspring (descendants) are referred to as children; male children are sons and female children are daughters (see Kinship).

A nuclear family (also known as an elementary family, atomic family, or conjugal family) is a family group consisting of two parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, a larger extended family, or a family with more than two parents. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple that may have any number of children. There are differences in definition among observers. Some definitions allow only biological children who are full-blood siblings, some consider adopted or half- and step-siblings a part of the immediate family, but others allow for a step-parent and any mix of dependent children, including stepchildren and adopted children.

Some sociologists and anthropologists consider the extended family structure to be the most common family structure in most cultures and at most times for humans, rather than the nuclear family.

A parent is either the progenitor of a child or, in humans, it can refer to a caregiver or legal guardian, generally called an adoptive parent or step-parent. Parents who are progenitors are first-degree relatives and have 50% genetic meet. A female can also become a parent through surrogacy. Some parents may be adoptive parents, who nurture and raise an offspring, but are not related to the child. Orphans without adoptive parents can be raised by their grandparents or other family members.

A parent can also be elaborated as an ancestor removed one generation. With recent medical advances, it is possible to have more than two biological parents. Examples of third biological parents include instances involving surrogacy or a third person who has provided DNA samples during an assisted reproductive procedure that has altered the recipients' genetic material.

Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. In addition to conventional literary genres, modern children's literature is classified by the intended age of the reader, ranging from picture books for the very young to young adult fiction for those nearing maturity.

Children's literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales, which have only been identified as children's literature since the eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition, which adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" because many classic children's books were published then.