They'll get turned off to music forever if you try to pound scales and sight-reading into them. Just make them play, and everything else will come later. And so it was that our son became a child prodigy. Well, in a manner of speaking. At 3, he had the advantage of up to 15 years over Mme.
Parents are such suckers.
I'd be willing to bet right now that, at this very instant, there are at least a million couples around the world asking themselves the same question after hearing their darling's violin squawk or clarinet squeak for the first time. We encouraged Romy, of course, and played him endless hours of classical music. He insisted on having the record cover in his hands as he listened, so he could look at the picture. Presently we saw how deeply that image had worked its way into Romy's brain. There's Prokofiev on a motor scooter.