Whereas children can learn from their interactions with their parents how to get along in one sort of social hierarchy--that of the family--it is from their interactions with peers that they can best learn how to survive among equals in a wide range of social situations.

Although adults have a role to play in teaching social skills to children, it is often best that they play it unobtrusively. In particular, adults must guard against embarrassing unskilled children by correcting them too publicly and against labeling children as shy in ways that may lead the children to see themselves in just that way.

Children, then, acquire social skills not so much from adults as from their interactions with one another. They are likely to discover through trial and error which strategies work and which do not, and later to reflect consciously on what they have learned.