Lessons We Learned From The Sea: Bedtime Adventures with Hemingway & an Ocean-Loving Seven-Year-Old

Listen, I know you’re probably questioning my judgment: reading The Old Man and the Sea to a seven-year-old? There’s a giant marlin, relentless sharks, and a tired old man who hasn’t caught a fish in 84 days. A bleak picture indeed. Unlike most children's books, there are no colourful graphics, no lovable anthropomorphic characters, and certainly no warm, fluffy ending. Yet there’s something quietly profound here, and I hoped my son—currently in his ocean-loving, fish-obsessed phase—might benefit from the lessons hidden in its pages.

At this stage, any task demanding more than a few sacred minutes of mental or physical effort feels, to him, like pure suffering. He's been working since he was a toddler, so it's easy to forget he's still just a little kid. But like most young whippersnappers today, his frustration tolerance is relatively low. He wants things to be easy, and when they aren't, he quits. Instant gratification rules the day. But when I attempt to momsplain anything about grit, perseverance, pride, humility, and the nobility of struggle, it's invariably met with an eyeroll—and some sarcastic quip like, "What is this, a therapy session?"—thanks to the snark he inherited from yours truly.

I'm blunt with my kids, which can be useful, but I'm learning that sometimes you need to take the side door. Maybe that's the way to plant seeds deep in his inner world. He’s cerebral, bound to the outdoors, and drawn to epic tales. I want him to recognize that nature is a force to be reckoned with, that life moves in cycles, and that even when things don’t work out, the struggle itself is worthwhile. I want him to see that human connection—empathy, kindness, shared effort—is as important as any victory at sea. Sometimes we have to customize our approach to the individual child. I'm all for unorthodox parenting, and I think that's what really helps kids thrive.

We haven't quite finished the story yet, but so far, he's hooked. I think he's starting to grapple with many of the themes as experienced through Santiago's struggle. Life, and our survival of it, is about adventure—about actually having the courage to try, no matter the outcome. There's a quiet triumph in putting your efforts towards something, even when staying on the sidelines would be easier. Turns out, I could use that reminder myself right about now, too.

So while a feel good, kid-friendly read isn't off the table in this house, sometimes life calls for stories that are a bit more complex. Time to REALLY learn about human suffering, kid. Hey, anything beats reading another Ninjago book, if you ask me.