Half-Formed Theory: Child social development

Let's think for a moment about the social life of children. Think back to your school days, and remember what it was like to have a bunch of three/six/nine/twelve/fifteen-year-olds all in one room. Now think about the social life of adults. In fact, think about an ideal version of the social life of adults - an office where everyone is perfectly professional in their interpersonal dealings, a cocktail party full of sparkling conversation, a mutually-supportive friendship, a healthly romantic relationship.

There are so many aspects of the social life of children that do not seem to lead to any of the skills necessary for a healthy adult social life. I think the main problem is that children's brains are generally not fully developed, so they generally are not able to perform interpersonal interaction at an adult level. And when you get a bunch of children together in the room, they all have the same flaws in their interpersonal interaction, so the society they create is going to include components that are simply not present in a mature adult society (c.f. the middle-school cafeteria).

Now imagine if a child somehow emerged from the womb with adult social skills, but no knowledge of child development. They show up at school and attempt to interact with their peers like you or I would attempt to interact with our classmates at night school.

That wouldn't work so well, would it?

Therefore, my half-formed theory is that children do not necessarily need to be able to socialize well with their peers to become fully competent at adult socialization. Certainly the inability to get along with one's peers could be indicative of problems, but it isn't that difficult to imagine how a person could be unable to navigate nine-year-olds' recess cliques or enjoy twelve year olds' school-bus antics, but could still get along perfectly well in adult society.