I just realized, watching Maika practice standing, that there's nothing I can really teach her worth teaching. I can't teach her all the most important things: how to stand, how to eat, how to see, how to crawl, how to sleep, etc.

I just have to let her do it and make mistakes and try again on her own.

I made that mistake with Mia and her mouse skills. I tried to "teach" her to double click and drag and drop. Of course she got upset. Of course she quickly learned it on her own when she had to in order to play a game she wanted.

Currently I am worrying about her social skills (she prefers to play with mommy more than anyone else it seems) and wondering what I can do to 'teach' her to be more social. Seeing as I lack social skills myself, though it seems foolhardy to try. Also because you can't really "teach" social skills to a 3 year old, you just have to let them figure it out on their own and sit back and bite your nails.

Strangely enough, after more than 10 years teaching (swimming, Japanese, English, Tai Chi, computers) it's a realization I have come to in my professional life as well.

You can't really teach anything. You can provide opportunities to practice something. People will only get it if they exert effort on their own.

They want to blame it on the teacher or the course or the book or their lack of sleep or whatever if they don't do well.

But it's really up to each person's brain.