I still know next to nothing about being a mother. By dint of doing things a thousand or more times, however, one does develop a certain proficiency, as well as a sixth sense about when a child needs to sleep, when he's hungry, when he's totally bored, and so forth.
At the same time, though, there's a danger of falling asleep on the job--not literally falling asleep, but falling into an easy pattern with its own ingrained mistakes and pitfalls. Lately the idea of "10,000 hours" has gained a lot of attention, from Malcolm Gladwell's book (Outliers) and others like it. I suppose 10,000 hours can serve as a convenient benchmark for the amount of time needed to become highly proficient at something--unless it's something like motherhood, where the requirements change for the different periods of a child's life.
I would say that unless one combines the idea of 10,000 hours with the idea of "beginner's mind" that D.T. Suzuki and other Zen practitioners talk about, it could be 10,000 hours or 20,000 hours and it wouldn't matter, one could still fail miserably at whatever it is one is setting out to accomplish. To put it in a more positive light, however: 10,000 hours plus beginner's mind plus more than a little natural talent and someone could move mountains.
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