Bedtime rituals can be important for establishing sleeping hours for kids, and these royal parents don't want to spoil their kids.
Many parents struggle with putting their kids to sleep at night and many of them devise adorable rituals like singing a lullaby or reading them a story to help them go to dreamland. The British royals are no different when it comes to parenting. While they may have many engagements and duties to attend to, Prince William and his wife, Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, try to spend as much time with their kids as possible. Sometimes, it may not be possible for them to be there every day but they keep all communication channels open for their kids.
On February 4, the Duke and Duchess, who were in south Wales for their royal duties, had their children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, right in their thoughts. When Prince William saw a child reading Julia Donaldson's Room On The Broom, he told those gathered, "I read this to our children all the time." He also joked that the author has saved many parents during bedtimes. He said that he met the author when she received her CBE for services to literature. "I said 'do you realise how many parents you have saved at bedtime?' he said.
The father-of-three added another good children's writer to the list. "David Walliams also does good books for children - for a little bit older children I think. I've read one and it was really, really good," he said, according to Hello magazine.
When William and Kate are unable to be by their children's side, they make sure to call them from wherever they are. When the couple had gone to Pakistan for a trip, they called their children every day to check up on them.
"William and Kate hate leaving the kids, but know they’re in good hands," a royal insider told Us Weekly, referring to their nanny and Kate’s mother, Carole Middleton. "Carole has an extremely close bond with George, Charlotte and Louis and Pippa’a son, Arthur, too. They adore her."
The insider also revealed that Carole "treats all her grandkids equally." Kate's younger sister, Pippa Middleton, has a son, Arthur, who is almost two years old. The source also said that the royal kids would have stayed with Carole and her husband, Michael Middleton, while their parents were on tour if not for school.
Prince William may have learned to be a hands-on father from his mother, Princess Diana, who also had a bedtime ritual for her kids. She was known for being a devoted mother who wanted her children to see everything and be grounded instead of being confined to elite circles. "I hug my children to death. I get in bed with them at night and hug them… I always say, 'Who loves you most in the whole world?' and they always say, 'Mommy…' It’s always that… I always feed them… It’s so important," Diana had said in the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words, according to ibtimes.com.
While he loves being involved in his kids' life, sometimes it can be tiring, which is true for a million people across the world. Most parents love their kids to bits but any break from them is always welcome. Prince William reportedly told Eric Clapton at the 30th-anniversary dinner for the London Air Ambulance that he naps whenever he gets times because he is always tired as a father-of-three.
"With the children it's quite hard to get the time off. Any free time I do get I sleep!" William told Clapton, according to Hello magazine. He has joked about being sleep deprived when his brother, Prince Harry, became a father in May 2019.
"I'm very pleased and glad to welcome my brother to the sleep deprivation society that is parenting," he had said, as per Sun UK.
References:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/10305107/prince-william-naps-spare-time-exhausted-parent/
