Late childhood begins your transition into adulthood. Late childhood is also called puberty. During puberty, you go through several physical and emotional changes. Puberty starts when your brain releases chemical messengers called hormones. These hormones trigger your body to develop into the body of an adult.
Time Frame
Puberty usually starts between the ages of 8 to 13 for girls and 10 to 15 for boys. But you can be healthy and enter puberty earlier or later. Adolescence, or young adulthood, is the name of the time period between 13 to 21 years old.
Effects
During puberty, you gain weight. You might grow 4 or more inches in a year. Girls may notice one breast growing faster than the other, but usually this evens out. Sometimes boys experience temporary breast growth, too. Acne pimples, or skin bumps, may appear on your face, neck, and back. Hair growth and body odor may occur under your arms and in your genital, or pubic, area between your legs.
Features
During puberty a girl gets curvier. Her hips get rounder. Her voice gets mellower. She begins to have vaginal discharges--white, mucous-like liquid comes out of her vagina to naturally cleanse it. If you're a girl, 2 to 2 ½ years after your breasts start growing, you'll start menstruating. This means you have started to ovulate--your ovaries release one or more eggs each month.
Boys develop bigger and stronger muscles. If you are a boy, your voice gets deeper--it might squeak or break while it's changing. You'll start to get erections now---sometimes your penis will get hard and bigger and stick out from your body. You might have erections anytime. Once you get erections, semen--a white fluid containing sperm--can squirt out of your penis. This squirting is called ejaculating. Ejaculating while asleep is called having a wet dream.
Significance
If you're a girl, once you start to ovulate, you can get pregnant. You can get pregnant even before you have your first period because you could start ovulating without knowing it. If you're a boy, and you've started to ejaculate, you can get a female pregnant.
Warning
Some children have a chromosomal disorder that affects their growth. Turner syndrome, which affects girls, and Klinefelter syndrome, which affects boys, are chromosomal disorders that can slow down how fast a child develops. A child who shows no signs of puberty by age 16 should be checked by a physician to find out why, notes the website TeensHealth.
Expert Insight
A study published in 1997 by Dr. Marcia Herman-Giddens and her colleagues at University of North Carolina School of Public Health showed that African-American girls are more likely to start puberty earlier---as early as 6 years old. In the study, the average African-American girl started puberty between the ages of 8 and 9. The same study suggests that chemicals in pesticides may cause girls in the United States to enter puberty earlier.
