Prince William has opened up about telling his three children that their mother had cancer.
“Sometimes you feel you’re oversharing with the children,” Prince William, 43, said during an interview in Brazil, which he visited for the Earthshot Prize awards. “But most of the time, hiding stuff from them doesn’t work,” the father of three added.
In January, the heir to the British throne praised his wife, Kate Middleton, 43, for the “strength” she has shown since announcing her cancer diagnosis in March 2024. “George, Charlotte, Louis, and I are so proud of you,” the prince wrote in his birthday post, referring to their children, aged 11, 9, and 7.
During his interview in Brazil, the Prince of Wales said that revealing distressing information, like his wife’s cancer diagnosis, to his children raised many parental questions, but, because there is “no manual for being a parent,” he just had to “go with it,” explaining “we choose to communicate a lot more with our children.”
At the beginning of this year, the Princess of Wales revealed that she was in remission from cancer, thanked everyone who had supported her and her husband, and said she would focus on her recovery.
“You have to find your new normal and that takes time... and it’s a rollercoaster, it’s not smooth, like you expect it to be. The reality is you go through hard times,” the princess said about her recovery as she returned to public duties in July.
“Every family has its own difficulties and its own challenges,” Prince William said in response to questions by Brazilian TV host Luciano Huck about the difficulties he and his wife have navigated. “It’s very individual and sort of moment-dependent as to how you deal with those problems,” he added.
In the same year that Kate Middleton announced her cancer diagnosis, the Palace also disclosed that King Charles III had been diagnosed with the disease.
Sources have revealed that the Princess of Wales went through “hell and back” dealing with her health troubles, and according to royal commentator Robert Jobson’s article in the Daily Mail, Prince William was “shaken to the core” upon learning that both his father and his wife had been diagnosed with cancer.
The prince said that he didn’t hide difficult information from his children so they could “relax” more, rather than anxiously thinking about what their parents were hiding from them.
The British royal added that he prefers to explain and discuss feelings and situations with his children so they can understand “the bigger picture.”
“There’s a lot more questions when there’s no answers,” he added.
