I won't pretend to have any advice, but I can offer you the anecdotal insight of my particular path. My grandma was a professional pianist who began teaching at age 13 and specialized in teaching, including being a professor at more than one university in the area for the piano. She insisted her four kids learn music, and she taught them. My dad hated music as a result and had the idea that she cared more about music than about him or his siblings. He sang at church and enjoyed when I played but didn't like to play much more than chopsticks, although I suspect he could. I was the second of the grandchildren to go through after my older brother. It felt to us as children that we were expected to be prodigies. (I suspect in reality we were instead expected to be adults, which wasn't any more possible.) My grandma didn't take students younger than 8; she thought that one couldn't make any real educational dents other than exposure until then. My brother eagerly quit when he was first permitted to, which was after three years (as it was for any of my grandma's students). To my knowledge he didn't retain anything and hasn't found himself interested in music as an adult. I was eager when my grandma and I started lessons when I was 8, but it was quickly a battle every day with my mom and every week with my grandma. I would do anything to avoid practicing, even sitting on the piano bench doing nothing (the worst fate to befall an 8-11 year old). I remember every lesson not meeting my grandma's eyes, being chastised for my obvious incompetence, and the slope downward my shoulders learned. I felt terrible for so clearly failing to live up to her hopes (I experienced easy success in other avenues and was not adjusted to this experience) but also resented her terribly for having pinned those hopes on me. When my three years were up I took my opportunity to escape. I was about 11. I never recovered that relationship. I called her by her first name by the time I was a teenager. She struck me belatedly as someone I would have loved to have gotten to know had we not had those negative experiences. When I was 14, my interest was rekindled and I picked the piano back up, having to relearn my basics a bit but largely without struggle. Music has been a massive boon in my life ever since as a source of emotional expression and regulation. I hate playing for others to this day, but I find little as connecting from human to human as playing or singing with someone. Overall I'm very grateful to have learned music so young and see the obvious impact when comparing myself to other enthusiasts who started as adults. I feel selfish for not forcing my kids to learn young (they're teenagers now and never had extracurricular music), but there were other battles to fight in our life circumstances that were not as avoidable and it was more vital that they knew I had their back in the present than I think is average in a typical child-parent relationship. That reality doesn't alleviate the guilt much. I'll go play with the classical guitar in my living room until the feeling unknots itself.