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Parenting

31st May 2020

Prince William reveals that mealtimes with small children can be a bit of a challenge

Trine Jensen-Burke

Prince William dinner time with kids

So much same.

As any parent knows, trying to keep everyone happy at dinner time can be a bit of a hit and miss when you are dealing with little people.

Kids are notoriously fickle, and whatever food was a firm favourite one day, might be at the bottom of their list of tolerable foods the next. Sigh. Been there, scraped the un-eaten dinners in the bin more times than I care to remember.

However, few things make me feel better than realising others are in the same (sinking) ship.

Recently, the Duke of Cambridge, himself a father of three young children, admitted that the success of his family meals depends very much on “what’s on the table.”

The Duke, speaking to a charity that provides hot and healthy meals for vulnerable families during the coronavirus pandemic, said the Cambridge dinner time could go “very well”, joking: “But if you put something on the table they don’t want to do, that’s another ball game.”

The Duke, who has been forced to do all his royal engagements digitally of late, spoke with two charities that benefited from grants from the National Emergencies Trust, checking in to hear more about their work.

One, the Peek Project (Possibilities for Each and Every Kid), has cooked 123,000 nutritious meals for families in East Glasgow since lockdown began and works from a food truck called Peekachew.

The other, Finding Your Feet, works to provide physical and emotional support to amputees and has transformed its operations to work online, running counselling, exercise classes and virtual meet-ups.

“You’ll know yourself, the hardest time is dinner time,” the CEO of one of the charities joked with the royal.

The Duke laughed and replied: “It depends what’s on the table. If parents put something on that children love, dinner time goes very well. But if you put something on the table they don’t want to do, that’s another ball game.”