Patience and encouragement, ok, but what else?

We smile when a toddler walks, and when he falls. He's trying to figure out how his body works. And how language works --we encourage him and try to peice out what what exactly he's trying to tell us ("Ro ae cae!" .... Rover ... ate ... the cake!??)

We're not so patient with clumsy teenagers, who are also trying to figure out how their new body works, and their new roles, and who sometimes find it quite hard to say what they intended to. They have tantrums too, and seem to get more annoyed than toddlers do when we laugh at them.