How can a parent object reference any of its child objects, or descendants several levels down?

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Polymorphism lets a reference typed as the parent class refer to objects that are instances of any subclass (even many levels down). This works because the language supports dynamic dispatch: when you call a method on that reference, the runtime invokes the subclass’s overridden implementation rather than the parent’s. That means you can write code that works with the parent type and still have the actual behavior come from each specific descendant.

The other concepts describe related ideas but don’t by themselves enable this flexible referencing. Inheritance defines the parent–child relationship, abstraction focuses on exposing interfaces while hiding details, and encapsulation hides internal state; none alone guarantees that a single parent reference can point to and operate on any descendant’s concrete behavior.