To be annoyed by the Duchess of Cambridge's claim that home schooling is 'exhausting'

[Livingtothefull]

www.edp24.co.uk/news/kate-middleton-video-call-parents-homeschooling-challenges-pandemic-7080128

I accept that lockdown has had an impact on everyone to some extent, however privileged. But I can't help being irritated by this. Even if we accept that she is doing the home schooling herself without any help, I don't think there is any comparison between her situation and that of many other people. I am not saying lockdown isn't difficult for her.....but it is a million times harder if you are say a single parent, struggling with home schooling and a minimum wage job which you may lose any time, worried sick about your and DC future if this happens. And doing it in a poky flat instead of a vast country estate.

And I know she may be trying to show empathy with the rest of us. But TBH I would have much more respect for the royals if they would just acknowledge their privilege rather than claim common ground which just isn't there.

Yabu. You don’t live her life. Perhaps she does find it exhausting. We have no way of knowing how much or how little she does.

The families living in 'fully staffed households' are not like a breed of dog, you know, nor are the children in them kept caged

Has anyone said a nanny = caged children? Bit of an odd leap.

Also...and this may be hard to imagine...but some people have the money to avoid directly raising their children and don't really find it an option. That means they're doing some of the hard stuff, enough to get exhausted if they are responsive to their children.

Oh come on, give us some credit. Of course if you are properly attached to your DC then they are quite rightly with you a lot and you worry about them and that's the most emotionally exhausting part. But it is still a huge privilege and an enormous practical help to be able to physically hand them over in to someone else's care, even if it is just for a couple of hours a day. It's a great help too to have someone there to help you take them out for a walk, or bath and put them to bed, or even just as a moral support. Especially if that someone is a trained professional nanny who is presumably very skilled at their job and their job is entirely dedicated to the DC without other duties etc.

My friend is furloughed she has one DC and a big house, shes forever telling me shes exhausted.
I don't say to her you're sat on your arse all day getting paid to spend time with your child, whilst other people have to work 55 hour weeks and homeschooling 3 DC.
I say I know its hard but do you can only do your best.

It's not a competition.

Maybe she is exhausted!

It's not a competition, her life has also changed beyond recognition. She didn't said I have it the hardest out of everyone did she. But actually quite a lot of people do find it hard to admit they're struggling juggling homeschooling etc, it's nice to hear a woman with a platform speaking up; no matter how unworthy of how she feels you think she is.

@Didkdt

Her children are at a school running a full timetable by Zoom The school extras pastoral SEN and clubs are running The Cambridge children have at least one nanny. They have a housekeeper and household staff The Duke and Duchess have relocated their home office to Sandringham so not at home at Amner Hall Can someone leap in when we get to the point where her life is blending in with most of ours

I have order a cabin office thing for the garden. If you squint hard enough, it might have a slight look of Sandringham.

They have 24/7 maternity nurses, nannies on a rota that cover day and night, and then they send the kids to boarding school. Upper class families have a different culture. They are not desperate to spend every precious moment with their children

And you know this how?!

I know my own circumstances are enormously privileged so I try really hard not to offer comment on how I might be experiencing home schooling and work. But that doesn’t stop the boredom, the sadness of not being able to see family and friends and the sheer relentless monotony.

She's completely out of touch with reality like the rest of them - exhausting - seriously?

Housework etc - no
Actual real job - no
Mortgage - no
Rent - no
Overdraft - no
Credit card debt - no
Bank loan - no
Single parent - no

Roof over head - yes several
Spouse at home - yes
Household staff - yes several
Unlimited funds - yes

Come on - even if she thinks she's exhausted she can put her feet up anytime especially at the moment when there are no pesky Royal Engagements to perform 🙄

I am exhausted home educating two children with high IQ. They have medical conditions meaning mainstream education doesn't work for them. One dislocates his knees a lot and suffers skeletal pain from inherited Ehlers-Danlos syndrome from me. The other has severe dyspraxia and autism. I have sole custody, and their father does not share care. I also look after an elderly mother recovering from cancer and other conditions. I have 16 medical conditions, including Ehlers Danlos, arterial thoracic outlet syndrome and neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome, bone necrosis and foot pathologies requiring toe amputation and osteotomy. I need three emergency surgeries in the next year or so. I also work in a self employed capacity and run a family business on top. I laughed when the GP suggested a 'sick note' to my employer...am I giving that to myself? When W&K live my life, they can moan all they like about the woes of home schooling...otherwise they just sound fake and woefully out of touch with real challenge.

If I were only homeschooling and nothing else, I’d count my fucking blessings. As it is I’m spending 6 hours a day on Teams calls while the kids run riot, then trying to do the rest of my job, homeschool, walk kids and dog, tidy up, cook dinner and clean the fucking kitchen again. I’m lucky neither child has seriously hurt themselves while neither DH nor I can be watching them. At least Kate isn’t leaping off a Team call to grab the bleach spray off Charlotte before she can blind herself (this happened to me with my 5 yo in June).

Also, if Kate’s a bit tired and fancies an afternoon nap, hey presto! In comes nanny. If she wants to suggest that she steps back from 99% of her job because of homeschooling, she’s not worried that she’ll be sacked.

The difference between her and me is that if she wants help with anything at all, she can have it. I can’t. Whether she chooses to use that option or not is neither here nor there.

Her children are at a school running a full timetable by Zoom
The school extras pastoral SEN and clubs are running
The Cambridge children have at least one nanny.
They have a housekeeper and household staff
The Duke and Duchess have relocated their home office to Sandringham so not at home at Amner Hall
Can someone leap in when we get to the point where her life is blending in with most of ours

Spot on.

But it is still a huge privilege and an enormous practical help to be able to physically hand them over in to someone else's care, even if it is just for a couple of hours a day. It's a great help too to have someone there to help you take them out for a walk, or bath and put them to bed, or even just as a moral support. Especially if that someone is a trained professional nanny who is presumably very skilled at their job and their job is entirely dedicated to the DC without other duties etc.

Well of course.

The RF have massively taken the piss ignoring Covid rules since day 1. From the Queen having workmen working on Buckingham Palace during first lockdown when it was illegal for builders to work, Charles flying to Scotland after testing positive for Covid after Nicola Sturgeon explicitly said no one should be travelling to second homes in Scotland period, royals testing positive but still expecting their household staff to wait on them hand and foot, household staffs being expected to go the entire festive season without seeing their own friends and family, William lying to the press about his Covid diagnosis, Will and Kate using NHS first responders for a non-socially distanced PR photo op back in March when they'd just returned from travel, multiple instances of royals breaking Covid rules, doing appearances ignoring social distancing and not wearing masks, breaking rule of six, William and Kate doing their superspreader rule-breaking tour against the orders of the Welsh and Scottish governments (all those photos of Kate not wearing a mask bending over to talk to sick children!). Will and Kate reportedly went on holiday by private jet at least once during the pandemic, albeit over the summer when restrictions were lessened.

The ultra wealthy elite do whatever they want. I sometimes work with fairly affluent people and they've all started employing tutors to come to their homes, and this is just ordinary upper middle class Londoners, not the true rich. There's a million loopholes to get around restrictions, and plenty of people desperate for work. Hell it's easy to get a hairdresser or manicurist to come to your house if you have money and connections. Even C-listers like Rita Ora are running around successfully bribing restaurants to open specially for her and turn all their cameras off, imagine what the actual ultra-elite have access to.

Maybe Will and Kate are mostly obeying the rules and the breaches were just blips. But they're royals. They are nothing like the rest of us. Royals aren't worrying about not popping out to meet a friend for a walk in a park, they're jetting to a crony's private island in the Caribbean hush hush.

Usually she is very supported by the public. She could do no wrong as the vultures public have now switched to Meghan. So, probably Kate just became too confident and went a bit too far. She is very privileged and as many people have said, it would have been better to say nothing.

Some have lost a lot more though.

Yes.

I think the DoC has demonstrated she cares about that and knows more about it than, say, I would.

It might be more helpful for struggling parents if there was a thread highlighting the charity work the DoC has done and raising the profile of the initatives she's involved with, rather than a thread by mostly middle class women bitching on their behalf.

@Throwaway99

It's not jealousy. It's living in the real world and not falling for the utter bollocks that we are supposed to believe.

No, apparently YOUR JUST JELLUS HUN.

You couldn't possibly have an opinion.

rather than a thread by mostly middle class women bitching on their behalf.

Why are you bitching about other women bitching?

It might be more helpful for struggling parents if there was a thread highlighting the charity work the DoC has done and raising the profile of the initatives she's involved with, rather than a thread by mostly middle class women bitching on their behalf.

I'm middle class & struggling & feel perfectly entitled to "bitch" on my own behalf thanks 🤨

I think the DoC has demonstrated she cares about that and knows more about it than, say, I would.

* If Kate was on The Only Way of Essex, she might be fighting on a race course while merry hell goes on at home, because she could.*

Yeah I agree, it's sounds like you don't have a clue.

@shindiggery

But it is still a huge privilege and an enormous practical help to be able to physically hand them over in to someone else's care, even if it is just for a couple of hours a day. It's a great help too to have someone there to help you take them out for a walk, or bath and put them to bed, or even just as a moral support. Especially if that someone is a trained professional nanny who is presumably very skilled at their job and their job is entirely dedicated to the DC without other duties etc.

Well of course.

Shindiggery do you not see there's a contradiction between saying "well of course" and "Actually, money does not take this away. "

I was arguing that actually money does help , even if you are fully emotionally available to your DC (which I am sure KM is) precisely because it allows you to have little breaks from the stresses and emotional worry here and there, so you can get enough sleep and perhaps a little bit of "me" time, and because, when you are with your DC, even if you spend many hours with them, you can focus solely on them and not worry about cooking, cleaning, and a thousand other things that "commoners" have to fit in to their day.

God she’s absolutely embarrassing. I cringe watching her try to appear useful or to contextualise her life against the life of her husband’s family’s subjects.
The dreadful Covid choochoo tour
Effectively her ‘BeBest’ family questionnaire, how very groundbreaking

She and he are a disaster. The BRF cannot survive them. They are a charisma and work ethic free zone.
She should do what she seems to love and be natural at - dressed down, arseing about with kids or sailing
The rest is too dire for words - her fashion is also an utter disaster - this is an area where she could excel and be a British design fashion plate, shifting the fortunes of the BFashion industry
I do think she’s not allowed to out shine poor temperamental Willie

Out of interest though, considering the context of the comments, if she had been asked on the video call to describe 'parenting during the pandemic', as she was, and instead of saying exhausted she said great- don't you think she would have still recieved criticism for rubbing it in the noses of parents also on the call?

Poor woman can't do right for bloody wrong!!!! @Livingtothefull