I was very excited when my daughter, around the age of 10, showed interest in programming. I showed her Scratch (from MIT), but I think my enthusiasm scared her off-- and she dropped it quickly. I regret that I didn't play it a bit cooler.
See Berkeley's Half Full blog:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/raising_happiness/post/the_r...
In this case, though, it wasn't that I praised her-- just that I got excited about how cool Scratch was. Suddenly, it wasn't that cool to her anymore.
Similarly, she also hates the Beatles. I mean, how is that even possible?
Now we just cultivate whatever interests he has, and try our best to answer any questions he has. He's interested in marine life, but is a bit too young to help out at the Seattle Aquarium. We've enrolled him in a few robotics classes and a programming class that used Game Maker [1]. He loved the Game Maker class, I'd bet that it was a gentler introduction than what I tried with Scratch.
FWIW, he's into video games too (we have a 360, NDS, Wii, PC), but we limit his time and prioritize digital entertainment last.