But I've also been through a costly divorce I had to put on credit and have two kids half time, pay child support, and have three awesome step kids.

Think about what the rent was when you were a child compared to today. 

The wife and I make +300K combined, we're currently not paying rent or child care (thanks, family!)

Taking my child snow sledding or ice skating on a cold sunny day makes for amazing memories.

In MA, property owners are REQUIRED to bring a property into a lead safe condition (called compliance) if a child under the age of 6 resides in the house/apartment. 

When you accomplish this, Real Estate will be child's play.

My Mom invested in RE so I sort of had the AHA moment as a teenager but got good grades, went to college, worked at, in hind-site, stupid but maybe character building low paying jobs while attending school, graduated, joined the rat race with a job I loved for a long time, met my wife, had a child. 

. #2 they own the house out right that I grew up in since I was a child my grandfather paid cash for it so they never had a mortgage but it’s a 2 family home with no Tenant upstairs and no money to fix upstairs up to be livable.MY QUESTION IS how can we accomplish getting them money to fix these 2 places up to bring them cash flow on renting them out with no money?

If your college-aged child wanted to do personal RE investing full time, how would you advise them early in their career?

Also if you are doing flipping, in which case I suggest you look into Series-LLC and you operate each flip in its own child-series (if not clear why, ask for more details).I spent numerous hours researching from multiple sources the whole LLC question and asset protection matter and all the rabbit holes it opens.