Damn if you're not persuasive. You're right of course; they do relate to each other as peers.

Now this has me thinking about other child characters who can act as a peer with adults. It's a common trope in kidslit, of course, and also in my own writing, fanfic and original (which is littered with teenaged supergenius girls). It's the place from which Dawn/Giles comes from, I suppose, as well as other things.