Spreadsheets have many advantages that get overlooked by pushing for a "real language" while jump into a programming language involves learning a lot of new concepts at once.
For example, spreadsheets make all the memory visible at once. It makes sense like a piece of paper. You also have intuitive understanding of your algorithms memory consumption. Computing something for N by N obviously uses N^2 cells. Many problems will be solved in 2^n which will mean dragging down that cell for a short while at low values and suddenly a very long while.
2) Build your similar own projects as well
3) Try with electronics. For that age group I have had good succes with MicroPython on ESP32’s + various sensors/actuators. The first thing I do is connect an LED strip with RGB LED’s and let them play with that.
4) Find him peers with the same interest. In that age peers are better partners. You can still help facilitate a bit, but the best would be to find a Coding club.
I found it difficult to do with a person who did not get how to use control flow and can not mentally combine multiple control flow constructs.
https://www.routledge.com/Introduction-to-Digital-Music-with...
A parents job is to steer their kids not into superficial happiness found through whatever interested them at 16, but to actual long term happiness achieved through fulfillment, accomplishment, stability, and belonging.
If I ignored CS pushed by my father to focus on whatever interested me at 16 (pot, girls, metal music, wow), I’m not sure where id be, but I imagine it would be worse off.
Also I think you're too pessimistic about your past potential. You could have made a great musician, esports pro, hell there are even some successful marijuana companies now! I don't say this to stoke the flames of what ifs, but instead to highlight that it wasn't exactly your father's push for CS that is the only reason for your success. You should absolutely take some responsibility for committing and be proud of that, of course you can definitely attribute your understanding of why commitment is important to your father if that holds true!
Now that's good advice, teach your kids the importance of integral foundations like commitment, don't obsess over which specific field it is.
There's a lot of difference between your scenario, and the scenario put forth by OP, in just tone of description alone. You seem to be assuming that I suggested that the OP not be encouraging their son to do anything, and that's not what I said. I said that if their son has no interest in coding except when the OP makes them do it, then maybe programming is not their interest, and if OP ends up causing resentment while still pushing them into that career, then they're potentially setting their son up for a miserable life, and possibly estrangement (depending on all the other parts of their childhood that we here are not privy to).
Look up "aol chat coms" for inspiration from the 90s.
There used to be bots that played a scrambler game in AOL chat, you could make a chess-related one.
Two years of teaching high school CS