It's not just you. Adults get used to being competent and have stupid counterproductive identity issues around learning.

I put it like this:

9 year old who has been learning a skill (say how to draw or play a musical instrument) for one year says, "hey, I've learned a lot over a year and I'm not great yet, but I'm just 9 and have years to keep improving"

49 year old who has been learning same skill for one year: "I've made progress, but it's been a whole year and I still just draw/sound like a little kid"

In my own teaching, adults who put in the same amount of time and energy as kids generally progress as fast or faster.

(I was going to add that adults generally don't put in the time and energy, but then I remembered that lots of kids fail to do that as well)

> Adults get used to being competent and have stupid counterproductive identity issues around learning.

Learning to put my ego aside was one of the many great lessons I've learned from training Jiu Jitsu as an adult.

I wouldn't call it a stigma. I'd say there are issues with doing it appropriately. Adults have jobs, children, etc. They do not have the same "freedoms" a child has. While a child is forced to learn because of school+family, they have "free time" that is used to reinforce that. With adults, "free time" for reinforcement is harder to allocate.