Soap opera rapid aging syndrome (SORAS) is the practice of accelerating the age of a television character (usually a child or teenager) in conflict with the timeline of a series and/or the real-world progression of time. This allows for, for instance, storylines around a pregnancy and birth to be relatively quickly followed by storylines around the travails of that child as a teenager or young adult. This is usually accomplished by recasting the actor playing the part, although in some cases the character is not shown onscreen, only mentioned, until after they have been "rapidly aged".