When I was about that age, all I had was one of those no-name tricky Dick fun sticks (aren't they all?) actually, it might have been from Tandy, hands up anyone who remembers them... I feel old now

Haven't tried it myself, but the Mini TS80 seems to be a pretty small and lightweight iron with enough grunt to handle most jobs, Mr EEVBlog himself seemed to be ok with it
If you're real cashed up, at work we've got a bunch of JBC irons, the base stations are big and heavy, but the irons are pretty small and light and have real shmick silicone leads. There was someone who built an affordable controller for JBC irons
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/good-jbc-clone/I think it would be best to get something with temperature control, I've seen some of those "self regulating" irons get up to 550'C, I mean

250'C is enough for most beginner stuff, besides, a lot of the big brand name temp controlled irons are generally more robust, have auto-off (so they turn them selves off when you put them back in the holder, good for people who might be easily distracted...), they have leads that don't melt (especially important if it's a mains powered heating element), have better quality tips that the solder actually sticks to and most importantly heat up fast, the thing that frustrated my 7 year old self the most was waiting for my "self regulating" iron to come up to temperature, the more bored I got waiting, the more likely I was to stick it into something I shouldn't have to see if it was hot enough to use