Thank your lucky stars he didn't wanna learn drums.

I must've driven my mom nuts growing up. I've taken violin lessons, drum lessons, piano/keyboards, guitar, singing lessons, and various other noise makers (harmonica, tambourine).

I'm no guitar virtuoso, but I can play a bit, but I did it differently; I started with an acoustic guitar and wanted to learn all the full chords, and all that stuff. Electric you can get by doing things like bar chords and power chords. I kinda did it the wrong way (like they mentioned already) and found a new Johnson acoustic guitar on Ebay, that came with a nylon case, tuner and string winder, for $100. It actually sounded pretty good, but the action on it was atrocious, it killed my fingers trying to play it for too long.

I'd definately start out with a used one, you can get great deals at music stores, and you can haggle with em. I'd also probably add that for his first guitar, don't get him some bizarre shape just because it looks cool. Chances are he'll be sitting down most of the time while trying to learn, and trying to play a Flying-V while it's sitting on your leg isn't too fun, IMO, .