Quite randomly, the Princess of Wales will drop some “letter” or “essay” about the Early Years or what have you. I’m not even sure that Kate’s fans believe that she’s actually writing these letters or essays, nor does anyone believe that they’re making any impact whatsoever. It’s the royal equivalent of someone saying “put down your phone and go outside.” That’s literally the message behind Kate’s latest essay. You know the expression “this could have been an email?” Well, this could have been a tweet.
The Princess of Wales has urged people to hold on to their inner child, ensuring that early instincts for curiosity and openness are “never lost in the first place”. The Princess, who has recently begun campaigning for “genuine human connection”, said many adults now yearned for something other than an “increasingly digitalised world”.
Writing after her recent overseas visit to Reggio Emilia in Italy for her early childhood project, the Princess said childhood “can be understood as the state in which we come closest to our true selves”.
In a new essay, she says: “Childhood, then, is not only a beginning. It is also a reference point, a reminder of our true nature – and one that, even as adults, we might try to rediscover. If healing later in life is about rediscovering our most important connections, then perhaps the real task is to ensure that they are never lost in the first place.”
The Princess said she had recently been asked by a parent at her children’s school: “If we could all do just one thing, what would it be? My answer is simple: to prioritise love. I’m not talking about overly sentimental and romantic gestures, but love that is quiet and unconditional, built on time and patience: the joy found in ordinary things; the everyday magic of life itself.”
The Princess said children must be surrounded by “loving environments” to “thrive in the world today”.
The Princess wrote in her essay, published on the website of her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood: “By spending time in nature or being creative, we can nurture the very skills and emotions that cannot be digitised – awareness, empathy, humility, and above all love. These foundational qualities help us relate to others, understand our place in the world, and ultimately find meaning in life. All of them echo a way of being we knew instinctively in childhood, marked by openness, curiosity and emotional immediacy.”
…Is this a book report on her Italian trip? She’s turning in her essay pretty late! Obviously, no one will disagree with advice like “keep your childlike wonder” and “put down the technology and just connect to people the old-fashioned way.” While I don’t take Kate seriously as a self-styled credible expert in early-childhood development, it’s also clear that Kate does not take herself seriously either. I cannot imagine spending all of this time, money and effort to randomly pop up every three months with this “obvious advice is obvious” kind of work. What’s also so funny to me is that Kate has reverse engineered her Early Years work. She wanted to have a big, keen project where she could have big-girl business meetings and work on big-girl childhood development causes, but she didn’t want to actually learn anything or study or take real positions on any of these issues. She just wanted to wander around, yammering about “kids need to be outside.”
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
