Learning

I asked my friend a while back if she thought repetition was really a key to learning, or if it were more of a key to rote learning.
What I meant was, are the redundancies of worksheets, and busy work really necessary? Is repetition a vital key to learning? I wasn't questioning if worksheets were necessary - I certainly know better than that- but that if repetition were vital.
Do we, as unschoolers, reap the same benefits (or more, even) because we simply learn things in a natural way, and in our own time?

I'm leaning more and more towards believing it's just not necessary.
I think.

Mastery comes from practicing, sometimes. I believe that's true.
And this is something I've struggled with many times.
Sometimes it's a slow process when I want it to be immediate.
I accept something as truth.
I know this to be the way.
I can see that the way of it is xxx.
But I get lost (and frustrated, often) in the getting there.
Knowing the truth, and making your way on the path without stumbling or tripping are two entirely different things, sometimes.

So... is this related?
And where does one idea end, and differ, from the other?

Do you spose it's always a matter of time?
I remember being a kid, and being with a group of other teens out in a boat, on the water. We were (some of us) learning to water ski. I tried. A few times.
Another girl said while waiting her turn "I know how to do it. I'll get right up."
"Hmmph", I thought. "We'll see."
Damned if she didn't.
Got right up on her first try.
Blast!

Is it always the same?
Is there a familiarity involved?

Wayne Dyer tells of a story of being an ice skater as a kid. A fine ice skater.
He was watching the Winter Olympics with his children, many, many years later on television. Watching Kristy Yamaguchi.
"I can do that." he said.
"What?!?" his kids demand.
"I can do that. The spinning, the leaping, skating backwards, all of it. I can do it."
"You can not!"
"Yes I can. Someday I'll show you."
The man had not been on skates since he was fifteen years old, and was now sixty or better. He found himself at an icerink with his children.
He put on skates.
He stood up.
And within a few short minutes, he was skating like he was forty-something years ago.
He goes on to say that not one cell in his body was the same as it was forty years ago. Not one bone, not one blood cell, nothing. But he knew that he could do it.

Is it the same?

Trevelyn started learning (by his Mama's gentle introduction) to use the potty at age two, exactly. He was fully learned by his third birthday.
Madeleine made the request entirely on her own. She started being dry in the morning, and one day I got the potty out of the garage. No pressure.
At age two (exactly) she started going on her own.
It's been about three weeks. I think the process is nearing its end.
As I mentioned to someone earlier today, some might dismiss it as "Girls are easier than boys." But some of us would simply say, "Well, she's ready."
She was given the freedom to choose, and make her own decisions, and is growing up and learning all on her own.
She is ready.

Trev is learning to swim.
He is most willing to hold his breath under water. He kicks his feet. He's making inquiries about diving. He asks for advice on how to get from one end of the pool to the other. Under water.
I'm sure that with sufficient practice at a real (larger) pool, he'd have the basics down in no time.

I spose it depends on the circumstance?
On whether or not we judge it to be difficult?
If we think it's attainable?
If it seems impossible or not?
The limits of our own mind?

Or could it have a completely different relevance, such as what we truly (in spirit - what we've created for ourselves) desire to learn?

It doesn't make sense to me that a thing could be true in one circumstance, and not in another. As I've mentioned already today.... it seems to me that all things are relative. That what is true in one instance must be true in another.
Truth - universal law, I mean, not personal evolvement, doesn't fluctuate, does it?

So.... is the answer to be found somewhere in asking the question, then? In the process of the learning?