I've learned over the last few years that much of the parenting that parents do is far removed anything that can be seen. Anything that you can conclude is a direct function of your influence amounts to a very very low percentage of your actual influence. Not that I disagree with the importance of influence in the later bits, but so much of what a child is learning for the first time is all the subtle stuff you don't realize you're doing. How you and your spouse resolve conflict, and you and the child resolve conflict, and you deal with your own emotions, facial cues, body language, regular language, music taste etc