Last radio Ibought was a like new Hitec Lazer 4 off ebay. Cost me $10 with a charger. It works great and will be my sons first radio.
If I was worried about it Iwould send it to Hitec for a channel change and they will check it out. Cost is minimal.
This way he has a simple radio with less to go wrong during his training and we saved a bunch of money to put towards his Hitec Aurora 2.4.

Receivers for the Lazer 4 can be had cheap and if he gets in a crash destroying the receiver we havent thrown away a $50(or more) receiver.
He will be using a Thunder Tiger GP42, easy to set up, reliable, inexpensive. If he crashes it into a tree we get another for cheap.
All this is designed to take the pressure off, if he is flying a bunch of money he will be more nervous .
The GP42 is powerful but will still teach him to fly the wing as I prefer.
Inexpensive high quality reliable components.

Iuse FMSflight simulator. I picked up a cable to attach my transmitter to the computer for $8 on ebay and downloaded the flight sim for free.
It works fine to teach you the basic stick controls. Realflight is way more cool(yes I have flown it too) but really expensive in comparison.

Your bank account is all that is holding you back.