re: How good should I be after my first month of playing guitar?

This good.

Children with sponge-minds and active stem-cell circulation pick it up very quickly, both the physical and mental parts. Learning as an adult takes much longer. It hurts, physically, and mentally, whereas a child/teen doesn't dwell on the pain or the difficulty, they heal overnight,mentally and physically.

Other people said and I will reiterate, you have to put in the time. If your fingers hurt, it's because they aren't tough enough yet. If your chord changes are slow and sloppy, it's because you aren't sharp enough yet. It's just like a football coach running top athletes through drills, it is muscle memory and pain tolerance and mind learning.

Why did you choose acoustic to begin on? Is it because people on the internet said to start on acoustic first?

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Spending hours and hours at a time as a beginner is going to lead to where he is now which is little to no progression.

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He is only spending 4-5 hours per week playing (not hours and hours per day) and he is saying he doesn't feel like he has made any progress. I hear you on practicing small things slow though, repeating them and getting better and faster by focusing on them.