What is a pre-teenager or tween? A tween (pre-teen) is a child who’s between the stages of childhood and adolescence. It’s this “in-between” stage that the name “tween” is derived from.
Preadolescence can bring its own challenges and anxieties. A term used to refer to the preadolescent stage in everyday speech is tween and its perhaps older variants tweenie, tweeny, tweenager, preteen and tweener.