Scully, (edited to add this post was written before I read yours just above this one)
I would totally agree with you if I thought that Adam and Eve were childlike individuals from whom the ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, had been withheld or were lacking due to limited experience in life as it is with children. But, I believe Adam and Eve were fully able to distinguish right from wrong before they took the fruit, imo, they were adults. If Adam had been childlike then absolutely God would be wrong to require that if Adam had not listened he would die, and that is what God said.
Letting the story speak for itself, we have a man created by God and who receives instructions directly from God. "And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it," ASV. This is an adult here with a charge given to adults not children.
Adam is given the prohibition of eating from that one tree, God spoke to Adam as a man, effectively saying, here's the way it is Adam, I've given you everything except this. Adam is charged with naming all the animals. This requires not only having a language but also the ability to improvise on that language, to create names. Did the writer of this story give any indication that Adam was a mental or emotional child? No, I don't believe so. In fact, after God brings his wife to him Adam is mature enough to say; "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Adam gives this new creation a name as well, a name associated with how the woman had come to be. This is not a child speaking but a mature man. He also knew how she came to be, from his "side" which includes both "flesh and bone" he was not kept in childlike innocence of anything.
So why the name Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad? I agree with those who believe that the Tree symbolized the experience of having done good and bad. In other words up to that point Adam and Eve had not committed a wrong act, they had only experienced doing good, that is, doing as God had commanded, listening to their Father. This to many may sound like children but in fact aren't we all under some law or another? And if we break a law we are subject to the penalties imposed by the government who enforces the law even at times including death or a life sentence. It was not the fruit so much as the act of rebellion against God, the only source of life. At the moment they rebelled the connection with God was severed.
When Eve ate the fruit her eyes were not "opened" immediately. It was only after Adam ate the fruit that the eyes of both of them became opened. It was only when the one who was given the direct command, the one who was not deceived but knowingly took the fruit, ate, then it was that the eyes of both man and wife were opened. And then they realized their nakedness. (It is true that very young children do not take note of their nakedness but so do adults in nudist camps they do not run and hide from being seen naked either.) There was no reason for shame before but now suddenly their nakedness became something that had to be covered especially that part of their bodies that was the most different between them. Suddenly, unlike the animals Adam had named who go about living their lives unconcerned about covering, the man and his wife were quick to rectify what they had earlier not even noticed. What is the writer attempting to point out? That, imo, a drastic change in how the man and woman viewed themselves had occurred. Did they feel an immediate guilt, an immediate separation from God, an immediate need to seek to cover first of their physical differences, and even from God? Each of us must decide, if we want to that is.
There is so much to find in this Genesis account. So much more than we were taught in the Watchtower. Here is another interesting point; while Adam was told he would return to the dust and the serpent was told his head would be bruised (or crushed) both punishments appearing to end in death there was no death sentence applied to the woman who was the only one deceived. Could this be why the account says of Adam when naming his wife, Eve, "And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living," maybe. The idea possibly being that those deceived by anyone into rebelling against God will not have the same end as those who knowingly and willingly rebel.
Eve, in fact, later becomes the first human recorded to use God's name in the Bible, the first to give credit to YHWH, "And the man knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah." ASV When she said concerning Seth, "God hath appointed me another seed instead Abel; for Cain slew him," it is apparent, imo at least, that Eve is referring back to the pronouncement made in Genesis 3 concerning the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Abel in the account is approved of God, he dies. Seth is born and Eve believes he is another seed appointed by God to take Abel's place. Some say that Eve was just hoping or speaking what was in her heart but that it meant nothing. I can't agree because the writer's intent must be taken into consideration. The writer of Genesis did not disagree with Eve's words in fact he confirmed them by having Seth become the progenitor of those who would eventually worship YHWH.
Just some thoughts, not meant to be anything more than my opinions on what I believe is an inspired story but not necessarily a literal one.
