Royals typically live lavish lifestyles, but William, Prince of Wales doesn’t want his three children — Prince George of Wales, Princess Charlotte of Wales, and Prince Louis of Wales — to grow up completely unaware how the real world works. In addition to the strict rules William and Catherine, Princess of Wales make their kids follow, he has opened a dialogue with their children about homelessness.
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According to his documentary, “Prince William: We Can End Homelessness,” the future king took his kids to school every day while their mother Kate Middleton was undergoing chemotherapy. During this special time, he reportedly began talking to George, Charlotte, and Louis about what it means to be homeless and how it can happen (via Hello!).
“The first few times I thought ‘do I bring this up or should I wait to see if they notice?’ Sure enough, they did. They were sort of in silence when I said what was going on,” William reportedly shared. The Prince of Wales doesn’t want his kids growing up in their own private bubble, not knowing how the other half lives.
Prince William is following in Princess Diana’s footsteps
Interestingly, Prince William’s late mother, Princess Diana, did something similar with him and his brother, Prince Harry, when they were young. Also in that documentary, William recalled a childhood memory of Diana taking her sons to The Passage, which is a charity benefiting homeless people (via CNN). William admitted that he was slightly nervous ahead of his first visit, but he ended up enjoying the experience, talking to and playing chess with some of the people there. “That’s when it dawned on me that there are other people out there who don’t have the same life as you do,” he said.
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It’s this sentiment that William wants his own children to have as they continue to grow up in the royal family. Also reported in that Hello! article, William remembered asking Diana why people were sitting on the ground: “My mother would talk to us a bit about why they were there and it definitely made a really big impact.”
William and Diana had a good but somewhat strained relationship, and having this discussion with his kids is one way William can remain close to his mother. In addition to William attributing his compassion for others to Diana, he said in the “Diana, Our Mother” documentary that she helped him learn to embrace his feelings (per The New Yorker). Those are traits he surely wants to pass onto his own children.
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