How quickly do kids learn?

The first thing you'll discover about Suzuki students are that there are no rules about progress. Every child can learn; every child can achieve excellence. But the path along the way will be different for each child. Some children will learn in great bursts with just a few repetitions at a young age. Some children will appear to plateau for months or years, while building learning under the surface. Some will require many many times more work than others. Although some kids who start at 5 or 6 will catch up quickly to kids who started at 3, there are Suzuki students who have learned to play the advanced concertos by age 5 or 6; there is no way the kids who start at 5 or 6 are going to "catch up very quickly" to that. There are also students who started at age 11 or 12 who went on to professional performing careers. There's really no way to know how it will play out with any particular child.

The thing is: it really shouldn't be about musical achievement results. It should be about the process, about building relationships through time spent engaged productively in a common pursuit, about using the study of music to develop the child's spirit, humanity, ability to learn and self-concept. Practicing shouldn't be a price that is paid in order to get a particular rate or degree of results; it should be intrinsically valuable and enjoyable.