My littlest one started skating at 2 1/2, getting her own figureskates at 3. We got her Riedells from Everglides (
www.everglides.co.uk), although we could only get a size 6 as the smallest and she was a 4.5. but she wore slipper socks and was fine! She's now in a 9 (but I could never part with her first skates) and a very confident young madam on the ice. She's never had lessons; she has PDA and Asperger's so actually teaching her is hard work, so she just skates around and copies her sister and I. She has gotten fairly proficient this way, managing forwards and backwards, forwards Xovers, 3 turns, one foot spins and a half rotation jump, bunny hop and drag...
I do want to try her with a 10 min lesson with my coach when I am allowed back on the ice again, but only to see if she will respond. She knows our coach incredibly well, and more importantly, our coach knows her well!
We went twice to icetoddlers but she hated the fact that she was limited to the bottom third of the rink, and to be honest she's proficient enough to be dangerous for the others. She wanted to race me or spin, but with the toys on the ice there was no room, which started a paddy...

Anyway, my advice (and indeed the coaches' advice - one of them has a child same age as mine) is to just let them play on the ice, get used to it in their own time and feel confident alone before starting lessons. Em has so much speed about he now it's hard to keep up, but when she first started she barely took a step before falling

Enjoy skating with her! Em always wears her skating dresses on the ice now because she loves all the other skaters commenting on them
