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I was a counselor at a computer camp a couple years ago, and we taught C/C++ to 10 and 11 year olds, and they sucked it up like there was no tomorrow. Anything I taught them about this langauge immedietly intrigued them, and they had a lot of fun trying to use the concepts to make a new program. The programs don't have to have pretty graphics in order to have fun making them and show them off to friends. I was teaching them concepts such as linked lists, structs, and classes, and they just wanted more! Just be careful not to lie to them to make the concept simpler. I always hate when adults lie to children in order to simplify concepts. For example, if they don't know about pointers and you want to teach them linked lists... teach them exactly what a pointer is before you have them use it in a linked list.
I say don't taint him with VB - he may never evolve out of it. I have a friend who started at 9 years old with QBasic, and it's STILL all he knows at 20 years old! He's constantly just trying to eek more and more from the language, and has basically become a stagnant programmer. I think he's just now starting to realize that he should learn some more advanced languages.
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