I've found the stories of various backgrounds in music and sometimes vis-a-vis our countries enlightening. It gives another perspective. I'll try to lay out mine.
I came to Canada from Germany age 5. We moved almost yearly the first few years. I remember no music instruction in any of the schools except one. The gr. 2 teacher drilled us in movable Do solfege, non-standard - the minor Tonic was La. This gave me a kind of "aural map" and for the next 50 years what my music perception was based on. My parents played a lot of classical music which I heard. I would hear snatches play in my head at times. These all remained nameless. I'm still catching up to composers and pieces. In general I did not have, or buy myself, my own music. Maybe if I asked: I did a few times. By 18, I owned Mary Poppins, Sound of Music, Don Cossacks and a wonderful Russian singer - in total. We're 1960's.
I sang and played any instrument that came my way. I'd get babysat by my parents' hosts' accordion (only the piano key part). I had a recorder, mouth harmonica; was given a Hohner organ at 8 along with a book for adult autodidacts. Then a piano and a book of sonatinas from 1905 sent by my grandmother, along with a musical Czerny. I did not see anyone play the piano; it was all by myself. My "reading" was per that early solfege. I knew where to find "Do" on the piano and on the page, and then I "heard" the ups and downs of the melody from the page in large swaths. It was like 'playing by ear from the page". The sonatinas, the Czerny, the solfege, are all part of the same diatonic world.
Stuff happened; life happened: I had no piano for 30 years. I took violin lessons in my 50's and I know the teacher didn't know what to make of me, because one day that came out. 😉 I didn't know technique existed: teachers are afraid to intimidate adults, and my first violin was a dud. I did get the rudiments of stance and such. I had always chased the musical sound "somehow" - on piano my staccato was crisp in sound, poked with a stiff finger, in my childhood playing. (no inkling re: technique). So I could get the sound out for the first grades of music and guess the technical flaws got hidden. "Reading" music was that same finding do, seeing patterns, and anticipating where the music will go. It took 3 years to discover that I did not know how to read in a real way. I started brilliantly, and everything collapsed by year 2 and 4 grade levels in. A couple of years more, all kinds of back and forths, some blind alleys. I ended up with my first digital piano after 30+ years, and that's where I landed in PianoWorld.
When I came to PW in 2007 I had some first ideas of what learning an instrument and music were about; ideas about skills and forming them. I already had the "spontaneous playing", "hearing the music in your head" (if it's diatonic lol) but was missing the other side. I interfaced with teachers and others and worked with a main teacher and a few others along the way. A lot of the paths others are on.
I set out to learn to read music in a real way. I have a huge hole in regard to composers and compositions. I had to learn to look at my hands and be body aware for physical playing and am still getting out of physical nonsense. I had never thought to listen to how a piece I was working on sounded when played by others because I'd never done it, or had the opportunity to do so. I can listen to my own playing better than I can hear things in others' playing. I love the fact of the Internet.