The Prince and Princess of Wales told their children about the Princess' cancer diagnosis and treatment. Photo / Getty Images
The Prince and Princess of Wales chose to tell their children “everything” about the princess’ cancer diagnosis.
Prince William said they decided to be honest about the health challenges faced by both his wife Kate and his father, King Charles, over the past two years.
The prince addressed the challenges he and his wife have faced raising their children as he chatted to broadcaster Luciano Huck in Brazil, where the prince’s Earthshot Prize award ceremony was held last week.
“Every family has its own difficulties and its own challenges and I think it’s very individual and sort of moment-dependent as to how you deal with those problems,” William said.
“We decided to tell our children everything, both the good news and the bad. Sometimes you feel you’re oversharing with the children. You probably shouldn’t, but most of the time, hiding stuff from them doesn’t work.
“There’s no answers, but it’s always a balancing act to me that every parent knows that it’s kind of: ‘How much do I say? What do I say? When do I say?’
“And you know, there’s no manual for being a parent. You’ve just got to go with a bit of instinct.”
Both the princess and the King were diagnosed with undisclosed forms of cancer in early 2024. Kate, who underwent several months of chemotherapy treatment, is now in remission, while the King is still undergoing weekly treatment.
The prince also admitted that the decision to ban Prince George from having a mobile phone has “become a little bit of a tense issue”.
He acknowledged that the issue was “really hard” to address and suggested that the 12-year-old future King might get a brick phone with no internet access when he starts secondary school next September.
William revealed in a recent television interview that none of their three children had mobile phones.
A few days later, the Princess of Wales penned a powerful essay warning parents of the dangers of using mobile phones during family mealtimes, saying that reliance on the devices was undermining family life and causing “an epidemic of distraction”.
In a video Huck shared to his 23 million Instagram followers, the prince discussed their decision not to give Prince George, Princess Charlotte or Prince Louis mobile phones.
“It’s really hard,” he told Huck. “Our children don’t have phones. I think when George moves on to secondary school, then maybe he might have a phone that has no internet access.
“And to be honest, it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming a little bit of a tense issue. But I think he understands why, we communicate why we don’t think it’s right. And again, I think it’s the internet access I have a problem with.”
He added: “I think children can access too much stuff they don’t need to see online, and so having a phone and text message, the old sort of brick phone as they call them, I think that’s fine.”
The prince also revealed that he and the Princess share the school run, while he attends school events when he can.
“I’m the taxi driver,” he joked. “Taxi driver, sports days, matches, playing in the garden, where I can. School run, most days. I mean, Catherine and I share it. She probably does the bulk of it.”
Huck, who hosted William’s Earthshot Prize last week, and the prince spoke from a cable car with Brazil’s Sugarloaf mountain visible in the background.
The conversation emerged as Rio’s city council president, Carlo Caiado, announced that William will be made an honorary citizen of Rio De Janeiro, known as a carioca.
“Prince William truly deserves to become an honorary carioca,” Caiado said in a translated statement.
“His recent visit to our city was remarkable and already missed by many. He has shown genuine commitment to humanitarian and environmental causes, as we can see during the COP30 in Belem.
“He deserves all the recognition. The mayor said the prince should become a carioca and we embraced the idea.”
Asked by Huck what kind of world he would like to leave for Prince George when he becomes king, William said: “I care a lot about the environment and the world that the next generation are going to inherit, because all the social issues we want to deal with will start from actually our natural world.
“And so if we don’t get that right, there’s no chance of us being able to feed the world, be able to look after the world, be able to build houses for the world, have space to grow crops, all this sort of stuff.
“It’s all intertwined. And so the world I want to pass on to my children is one that I would love to inherit when I was a child. And I think we all want to do that is give, give the world in a better place than when we inherited it.”
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