Christmas Day walk in Sandringham

[Phase42]

This is such a strange thing....so the royal family walk along a stretch of path every year and people gather to watch them. These people try to talk to the Wales children and give them presents. They are photographing the children, taking selfies, etc. I think the kids are far too young to do this. It is so odd.

How on earth do William & Catherine think this is okay?!

Now who's twisting words?

ONE comment about my parenting upset me. Not the whole thread.

The whole discussion is not getting disturbing for me, just one unwarranted and unfair comment to me, that I would not dream saying to anyone else on mumsnet.
No need to be concerned about me, but thank you for your concern.

You are welcome @simpsonthecat.

You know full well I am saying that if a discussion is getting too disturbing for someone then imo they need to take a step back.

I would argue if a poster needs to resort to personal attacks (which I would count that comment to @simpsonthecat as) they are the ones who need to take a step back….

Anyway enough derailing

.

Maybe it’s that that there are roughly three loose groups of posters on the thread.

(1) Posters who find any excuse to put the boot in where W&C are concerned, including their parenting, for their own reasons;

(2) Posters who genuinely see a surprisingly unexpected safeguarding concern;

(3) Posters who are hacked off with the posters in the (1) category regarding their behaviour on the RF board in general.

I wonder if, unfortunately, a few posters in (3) have been misguidedly harsh with those in (2) because they have mistaken them for being part of the (1).

Anyway, I do hope détente can be restored. I enjoy the Royal Family discussions.

@SparklingCrow Can I vote you in as my MP please? 😊👍

There’s also (4) people who cannot accept even the mildest questioning of W&C and are convinced it can only come from a deep commitment to another cause.

What a lot of posts that seem to be derailing and deflecting.

Remember that some people for various reasons will not want any discussion that criticises the RF.

Keep on point and don’t get drawn into it. 👀

As I read not to long ago from another poster “ignore and carry on ladies”.

William and Kate should parent differently in this area, it’s not ok to let strangers have this sort of access to your children.

Its weird. Of course its weird. Its a weirdness that is tolerated for some reason.

Queueing up for hours in all weathers to give gifts to people you don't know and who don't know you but you feel like you do is 14-year-old-girl+boyband territory. Adults doing this with children is weird and for the sake of the children involved that needs to be acknowledged. Physical contact should absolutely be discouraged.

I agree. In many cases I believe it shows an issue of some sort going on, especially with the ones who then shout the children’s names and go on to ask for selfies, hugs and talk about nanny Diana.

They could put rules in place for these events, no calling the children, no gifts, or change what and how gifts are done, no selfies, no hugs etc.

The public will be the public though. It comes down to William and Kate parenting better and being responsible. They need to see this is inappropriate and at most let the children walk down the path smiling and waving. They need to stop letting the children be used to try to increase the popularity of their family.

What I find the most unsavoury is the public taking camera footage of them close up, then posting it anywhere and everywhere, I've seen it on FB. I'm not on TikTok but I don't doubt it's on there.
It shows a whole different perspective to official media. As I said before, one was of a woman shrieking 'where's the children, I want the children!' as other royals walked by. It's a circus!
Taking pictures from a distance as they walk up the path, fine.
Taken inches/feet away, and a lot of them, not so.

There is lots of footage on TikTok. One woman asks for a photo with Charlotte and Charlotte says yes, and then the woman says ‘are you able to take it or are you not allowed?’ The video then cuts off and the woman has posted the photo of them together. The woman gets some praise for asking but thankfully a lot of criticism for asking a child for a photo with her in the first place, people saying it’s weird. She has reposted it again with a caption saying ‘our moment’ with a heart. These people are weirdos.

Talking to them about Diana is really overstepping imo and trying to force a familiarity with children that they just don't have. Massive red flags.

And the people in 4 will round on those in 1 and 2 whatever the situation or suitability of doing so.

👏 😃

She has reposted it again with a caption saying ‘our moment’ with a heart. These people are weirdos.

Yuk.
What on earth.

These people talk like they know her, like she must like them or something 🤮

I saw a video of people filming Charlotte on the other side of the crowd taking a selfie with someone and they said ‘oh, we didn’t get a selfie’. No thought that it’s not acceptable, just wishing they too had overstepped. Also other weird comments like ‘she’s princess Anne in the making’. She 10, these people are so weird.

I saw the videos of this walk all over social media and was really shocked at how close the children were to the crowds of people. Some of their fans are crazy. What goes through the mind of an adult to ask for a selfie with a 10 year old they don’t know? Their regular stalker John talking about Diana to George was weird and William had personally introduced his children to him! What are William and Kate thinking? Surely they will see the footage and change things next year. I’ll be shocked if it’s allowed to happen again.

I wonder if they actually receive any advice about these sorts of issues? Sounds like they really need some parenting guidance.

That woman sounds delusional. The hero worship of a 10 year old child is creepy.

And it feels like some royalists are seriously losing the plot and need an intervention.

I know the royal family are trying to keep their popularity going but using the younger royals in this way is seriously wrong. I'm sure it must affect them mentally.

I don’t see this so much as a ‘parenting failure’ as a rare misstep of the judgement of their advisers who get paid to get things right.

Is this a PR issue? (‘The optics will look good’)

Is this a security issue? (‘Oh it’ll be fine, they’re just harmless nutters’)

Is this a family culture issue? (‘They’ll have to learn at some point. Never did me any harm …’)

As I said, I see it as a rare misstep, because it has made many observers feel uncomfortable about the increasing weirdness of it all, who previously didn’t feel like that; and IMO it was really not an especially good example to set to others.

It’s also, as we’ve seen, given some people ammunition to attack the parenting of W&C, so in purely PR terms it was a bit of an own goal.

Yuk indeed!

A normal response as a parent being told by anyone that this was ok, would be,‘absolutely not’.