I asked the same question for my 11 year old... albeit on another forum. I think the best bet is to evaluate what interests him, and try to work around that. I had tried scratch, but it didn't quite catch my sons interest, though I thought it was good. He's interested in writing his own comics/animations, so I'm looking for something that would enable him to create animations from a somewhat programming point of view. I'd recommend also, as did others, something gui oriented.. so make it catch his interest/be in his interest area, and make it gui oriented. Finally, if he has the patience to put up with brackets, case sensitivity, etc, then don't worry about c++ being too hard, but if those are too much, try some form of basic, or maybe if you can get more graphical, delphi/cbuilder sorts of ide's. good luck Jeff