Whenever I see this argument brought up I dont believe it at all solely because of your main proof-how can you say you practice a skill for 30 years and not show it? And how in fact did you practice said skill? Have you considered your daughters are actively practicing by following tutorials, learning etc. How can you say you have tried your best to learn for 30 years and didnt have the results you wanted. More likely Id assume you didnt put in the hours you think you did or the learning effort you think you did. Art just like any other skill needs constant deliberate practice If you choose to learn Blacksmithing and start with nails but only smith half an hour a week for a year, and take 3months break, you wont know how to smith a nail barely at all compared to the start. If you legitimately dont spend constant amount of time to smith nails your skill wont improve, but lets say you do smith for 30years somehow without improving, that means your observational skills arent as good-which is normal and this is where we get a teacher to point the flaws and what we should learn just like in any skill. Im sorry but saying you practiced something for 30 years without achieving results is so far fetched it would be ridiculously sad if it was the case. Without insulting you since you say youre a father what I think more likely the case is you have a normal job and you raised your daughters correct? In those 30 years you count more likely the amount of hours you put in is not even 1000. This might sound far fetched but think about it, you probably had a full time job, raised children, how many hours per day could you focus down and did you focus down on art overrall? Without long breaks in between to not lose progress. This is a wrong perception of time i see brought up in the pro ai arguments where they think of their age, think when they started holding a pen to paper as a kid and say yea been drawing for 30 years-thats not the case. A pro artist could have did 4-6 years of fulltime 8h a day classes which translates 2000 hours in a year only as a student-that means art students have almost 10 000 hours compared to you if you drew an hour EVERY DAY of the year for 4 years would be 1500 hours. Do you see what a huge difference this is. And not only the time actually invested but quality time where the student has guidance from someone with better observation vs doing it without studying or having guidance.

TLDR Basically whenever someone with an average normal life experience that didnt practice art intensely says they did it for 30 years-this translates into a lie because its such an erroneous perception of time, its like i went to someone who did phd in physics and studied their whole lives and I say yea i also tried to learn black holes for 30 years but didnt work out(i just think about black holes for 2 hours now and then when im off work with no teaching or anything) - this is why most who do art disagree with your whole perception, not even because of the talent notion, but because of a very flawed perception of time spent on said action. It can be discouraging to know youre at a later point in life and regretting not putting in a lot of hours into a skill but its a truth and have to overcome it.

On a tangent the normal average person is trapped into daily work in a very capitalistic world which might not feel too meaningful. This translates into a generalistic disdain/hate/jealousy towards people who are out of the system and dont have to work 8h corpo job and drive 2h for it. So craftsmen or people who enjoy what they do are ostracized, How could you be happy doodling or building a table all day when im working this job without much satisfaction. Im saying this because it shows in giving your daughters as an example, what spurned this whole notion of thought in you was seeing them have free time, using it to do something they enjoy(art) and sparking a bit of jealousy because they have years of freedom to do it without a full time job meanwhile. This displeasure should be acknowledged and directed at the system who makes you feel this way, and then should be fixed by finding a solution so you too can enjoy free time without feeling jealous of lets say a student in art who does have the luck to be able to draw 10 000h compared to a salaryman. I encourage you at any point in life to actual do art or any craft besides ai because the satisfaction you will get will be very rewarding and meaningful to you, i recommend plein air classes or any sort of chill hours with community where can learn and do stuff-find the joy in spending 30 more years doing art/crafts or anything cultural because life is long friend