Why do you all hate C++?

Being experienced C programmers, you'd benefit the most from it.
It's not like it's hard to write good C++ code.
You don't take a performance hit most of the time, either.

To start learning programming, C/++ are not the best languages.

The two classic first programming languages are BASIC (not Visual BASIC) and Pascal. I never learnt Pascal, but I can recommend BASIC as a good start.
Nowadays, Python is seeing an increasing popularity both as a first language and as a first object oriented language. It also has a very complete library and functional programming characteristics, both of which make mastered Python more useful than mastered BASIC or Pascal. FIOC (Forced Indentation Of Code) is also important to teach beginners the importance of indentation and style in coding.

Feel free to come back to C or C++ after six months or a year of Python (start counting after finishing a moderately-sized tutorial).