I started, alone, with a C64. Oh, and I didn't read English. I could only read the code in the manuals and type it in to see how it worked. Trust me, HTML/JS is ten times easier than that. My take is that language is not as important as having a mentor. I did not have a mentor, and that made me waste a lot of time with the basics.

Its so great that you are involving your son with robotics. Really awesome. You should definitely keep working on that. In fact, keep me updated on how you guys progress along. My email is in my profile.