Child

A child (plural: children), has two distinct meanings: the offspring, of any age, of two people, or an individual who has not yet reached puberty, though there might be a differing legal definition (see below).

The term "child" is also a counterpart of parent: adults are the children of their parents despite their maturation beyond infancy; for example "Benjamin, aged 46, is the child of Tobias, aged 73". Similarly in a generalized sense, see child node.

Legal definition of child

The legal definition of "child" is interchangeable with minor and varies according to each country's own individual interpretation.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as "every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier". ^[1]

Development

Main article: Child development

Child development is the study or examination of processes and mechanisms that operate during the physical and mental development of an infant into an adult. Pediatrics is the branch of medicine relating to the care of children. It encompasses ages from prenatal to teenagers and even young adults (ages 0-21 years).

Terms for stages of age-related physical development are listed below. Approximate age ranges are shown, but conceptions about the boundaries between different stages of life vary between cultures and periods. The age ranges and terms listed reflect 21st century conceptions in the developed world.

• Zygote, the point of Conception, fertilization
• Embryo; in the later stages also called fetus
• Birth
• Child:
  • Infant (baby) (ages 0 - 1.5)
    • Neonate (newborn) in the first month of life
  • Toddler (ages 1.5 - 4)
  • Middle childhood (schoolchild (or schoolboy or schoolgirl)) - Primary school/Elementary school age (ages 4 - 11)
    • prepubescence, a subset of the above (ages 10 - 11, approximately)
  • Preadolescence (preteen, or late childhood) - in the United States, middle school age (ages 11 - 14, approximately. Note overlap with prepubesent stage of middle childhood.)
• Adolescence and puberty (teenager) (13-18)

Cognitive development

• Learning
• Music lessons
• Infant education
• Language acquisition
• Developmental psychology
• Child art

Notable child prodigies

Main article: Child prodigy

• Christian Friedrich Heinecken (The Infant of Lübeck)
• Isaac Albéniz
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• Sarah Chang
• Tiger Woods
• Brad Hamson
• Tyler Hawes
• Yo-Yo Ma

Human development

Main article: Human development

Human development refers to all forms of development above, often in the context of clinical or developmental psychology, or as human development theory (in economics, an outgrowth of welfare economics).

Both the psychological and economic fields share a special concern with education and language fluency including literacy and numeracy, and with identification and development of more unique talents into the economic variable known as individual capital.

Earlier branches of economics see humans in terms of labour for production, means of persuasion or protection, which tend to be skills acquired only in adolescence and adulthood. The human development view is more evident in sports, music and other performing arts, such as acting where the child begins training often as early as three years of age. A contemporary example is Tiger Woods and his early training in golfing.

While there are problems with such early "streaming", child murder, child abandonment, military use of children and other major social ills are thought to be reduced by a human development approach – as there is a high value assigned to children by the state.

The UN Human Development Index is a means of measuring well-being used to rank states by these criteria.

Unaccompanied minor

Some airlines provide special services to a passenger who is an Unaccompanied Minor (UM). These may be compulsory paid services.

There may be special rules for asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors.

Heraldry

When used as a charge in heraldry, the "child" is almost always by default a boy, and there are very few instances in which this is not true.

References

1. ^ Convention on the Rights of the Child. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1989-11-20). Ratified by 192 of 194 member countries.

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