At 3 or 4 learning hot to use a fork and knife involves still developing motor skill and may be hindered by still limited vocabulary so struggling is understandable, at 13, there is nothing to learn- look at people who do it correctly, mimic their actions
Sure, and there's nothing wrong with some struggling—but it seems like nowadays parents don't want to see their kids struggle so they just cut the food for them, which in turn means the kids never learn.
I guess it's sort of like learning to ride a bike or to ski. You're going to fall sometimes. That's how you learn. If you don't struggle and make mistakes, you won't learn. (Or, to tie it back to "food and how you cook it," as my father once rather bluntly put it, "The only way to learn how to cook fish correctly is to freak it up a few times.")
