@cmb1828 - lots of good advice here! After lurking here and reading advice I realized my son needed to start piano lessons if music was his goal.
@compmom I enjoyed your story about your child starting piano late. Mine is a rising senior who finally found time to start piano lessons a few months ago, even though we got a piano a while back. He knows it will be important for college and after and will help him with AP Music Theory next year. He was lucky enough to find a teacher who is a pro on DS’s instrument now but whose first instrument is piano and who teaches both. His teacher is teaching him from a music school prep/theory perspective and that is really helpful. Fortunately DS is enjoying it more than he expected to.
As an aside, I took 7 years of piano as a kid and quit in middle school because I didn’t have time for band and piano, so I’m thinking I will take it up again! I will really miss having music in the house when DS goes off to college.