We did not restrict access, and when my youngest was 11, he said he wanted to be a game developer. (As he says, "everyone wants to be a game developer.") We agreed to support him, but only if he wanted to do it "for real". "For real" meant first learning C or Java. He agreed and we did something that seemed obvious after the fact: we hired a programming teacher the way other families hire a music teacher. Our son met with this college senior who had taken Java once a week for an hour and the guy took our son through the first 5 courses of UW's CS sequence. Sort of worked well: At 19, when my son applied for jobs, he could say 8 years experience in Java. By then, he also had C, C++, Lua, Unity, and 3D StudioMax. He made a stab at starting a game-development company, and wiped out on that first try. At 24, he is now coding backend for apps supporting farming and creates games now and then on weekends. (Some day, he might get his G.E.D.)