I can't make my armature affect any mesh deformation I am having an impossible time setting my armature to auto-deform the mesh like I've seen a dozen times in YT tutorials. Every time I attempt to do so, I fail. Here is the workflow:

Select the mesh
Shift+Select the armature
Select Object - Parent - Armature Deform with Automatic Weights (Note: Ctrl + P does not show me any armature parenting options; I don't know why; seems to work for everyone else).

[Here is a link to my .blend file][1]. Just in case you are interested. I'm basically at my wit's end. I've recreated armatures for this stupid thing three times. Every single time, I watch someone in the tut very easily move their mesh around with Pose mode after they parent. But I can't. Ever.
If I need to use weight painting to do this manual, I will. But I would really like to know what I'm doing wrong since the manual way is going to add a lot of time. At this stage in my education, I'm still trying to understand all the basic functionality and this is one of those.
I downloaded your file and got it to work. I am very out of practice with Blender but the file seems to have issues. seems like a lot of vertices for the bear, there is some strangeness in scales of things too. there was a parent loop in the Teddy and armature , when I cleared the parenting the armature shrank. I ended up deleting the whole armature and just making a new one and then the parenting with automatic weights worked.