One thing I have noticed on this Disney cruise is that the kids are not always the ones having the most fun.
That sounds weird, because everything on the ship is built around kids. The characters, the shows, the pools, the scavenger hunts, the games, the endless soft serve ice cream machine that somehow becomes a second parent by day two. This whole floating kingdom is supposed to be designed for children.
But the more I watch, the more I wonder if the adults are actually better prepared to enjoy some of it.
Not because we are smarter. Not because we are more fun. And definitely not because we look better in matching family cruise shirts. Some of those shirts should have been stopped at customs.
It is because a lot of the activities on the ship still require something that seems to be quietly disappearing from childhood: problem solving.
There are puzzles. Clues. Little challenges. Things where you have to look at what is in front of you, think for a second, try something, fail, adjust, and try again. Nothing crazy. We are not cracking the Enigma code between dinner and the fireworks. These are simple activities meant to be fun.
But watching some people try to work through them makes you realize something.
We may have stopped teaching kids how to think.
At dinner one night, there was a mother and daughter at our table working on a simple puzzle. They were nice people. This is not me being mean. But they were stuck. Really stuck. I looked at it, thought about it for maybe a minute, and figured it out.
Now, to be fair, I am not always the best litmus test for normal people. My brain has been broken by years of IT problems, weird outages, crypto chaos, Microsoft escalations, and trying to understand why a printer with one job cannot print. I have spent a large part of my life staring at problems that should not exist and then being expected to calmly explain why they do.
So maybe I had an unfair advantage.
But still, it made me think.
At what point did we stop teaching kids how to struggle through something?
We have taught them how to tap. Swipe. Search. Ask Siri. Ask Alexa. Ask ChatGPT. Watch a video. Follow the tutorial. Copy the answer. Move on.
But have we taught them how to sit with a problem?
Have we taught them how to look at something and say, “Okay, what do I know? What am I missing? What happens if I try this? Why didn’t that work? What else could it be?”
That is not just puzzle solving. That is life.
Critical thinking is not some fancy school term that belongs on a poster in a classroom next to a cartoon owl wearing glasses. Critical thinking is how you survive when things do not go according to plan.
It is how you figure out what to do when your phone dies.
It is how you know when someone is lying to you.
It is how you understand money, work, relationships, tools, cars, contracts, directions, people, and the thousand little traps life throws at you when nobody is standing there with a multiple-choice answer.
The problem is, we have made childhood so frictionless that kids do not always get the chance to build those muscles.
We solve things for them. We rescue them too fast. We give them the answer because we are tired, rushed, or just want to keep the peace. I get it. I have done it. Every parent has done it.
Sometimes it is easier to just fix the thing.
But easy is not always good.
Kids need puzzles. They need chores. They need tools. They need basic mechanical skills. They need to know how to read instructions, follow steps, question bad instructions, and figure out when the instructions are missing a step because some adult somewhere was too lazy to finish the manual.
They need to know how to use a screwdriver. How to cook something simple. How to count change. How to read a map. How to ask a better question. How to lose at a game without melting down. How to win without acting like a tiny dictator.
They need to understand that “I don’t know” is not the end of the road. It is the start of the work.
That is what worries me.
Not that a kid could not solve a cruise ship puzzle. That is not the issue.
The issue is what that puzzle represented.
It represented a generation that may be getting less practice with patience, reasoning, hands-on learning, and real problem solving. And it is not their fault. They are growing up in a world where everything is optimized, automated, smoothed over, and delivered instantly.
We gave them convenience, then acted surprised when they struggled with resistance.
At some point, we need to go back to basics.
Not in some old-man-yells-at-cloud way, although I am absolutely getting closer to that age. More in a “maybe we should teach kids how the world actually works before the world teaches them the hard way” kind of way.
Let them be bored.
Let them figure out the puzzle.
Let them help fix the sink.
Let them get the wrong answer and try again.
Let them build something ugly.
Let them read the directions.
Let them struggle just long enough to discover they are capable.
Because confidence does not come from being told you are amazing every five minutes. Confidence comes from doing something hard, staying with it, and realizing you did not die.
That matters.
A cruise ship puzzle is a small thing. A silly thing. A dinner table moment between dessert and whatever Disney magic was scheduled next.
But sometimes the small things show you the big things.
And the big thing is this: our kids do not need more entertainment. They have plenty of that.
They need more thinking.
They need more doing.
They need more chances to be uncomfortable, confused, challenged, and eventually proud of themselves.
Because one day, the puzzle will not be on a cruise ship.
It will be a broken car. A bad boss. A financial decision. A relationship problem. A contract. A lie. A crisis. A door that does not open unless they know how to slow down, think, and figure it out.
That is what we should be teaching.
Not just how to have fun.
How to fend for themselves.
