Kate joined a video call with parents of children attending Roe Green Junior School in Kingsbury, north-west London. During this virtual engagement, Kate took part in a show-and-tell exercise led by headteacher Melissa Loosemore, which aimed at starting a conversation among the parents on the challenges of lockdown and homeschooling.
During the call, which took place on Tuesday but was released by Kensington Palace yesterday evening, Kate said she felt “pulled in so many different directions” after being forced to quickly learn how to be a teacher and even a hairdresser.
Ms Loosemore asked the parents to write down on a piece of paper “one word that describes parenting during this pandemic”.
Kate, after she chose “exhausting”, was asked to elaborate on her sentiment.
She said: “I think as parents you’ve got the day-to-day elements of being a parent, but I suppose during lockdown we have had to take on additional roles that perhaps others in our communities, or in our lives, would have perhaps supported us and helped us with.”
She added: “I’ve become a hairdresser this lockdown, much to my children’s horror, seeing mum cutting hair.
“We’ve had to become a teacher – and I think, personally, I feel pulled in so many different directions and you try your best with everything, but at the end of the day I do feel exhausted.”
Another parent taking part in the call, Nicole Seidemann, agreed with the Duchess of Cambridge’s comments.
READ MORE: Kate shows ‘determination’ with ‘emotional’ signals in latest video
Ms Seidemann said she was “definitely a full-time teacher right now and struggling to do much else”.
Kate and Prince William had already opened up in April about homeschooling and being a parent during lockdown in a candid interview with the BBC.
Then, after only a few weeks of homeschooling, Kate said they had faced “ups and downs” like “lots of families”.
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Becoming the teachers of their three children, she added, had been “challenging” but they had kept a strict routine.
Kate added: “We don’t tell the children we’ve actually kept going through the holidays.
“I feel very mean.”
Kate and Prince William’s eldest children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, are respectively attending Year 3 and Year 1 at Thomas’s Battersea school.
This school, one royal expert has said, “expects a hands-on approach” from parents – which Kate and William favour.
Royal author Katie Nicholl told OK! magazine: “Kate and William are very involved with the children’s schooling.
“Thomas’s Battersea expects a hands-on approach from parents, that’s part of the reason they picked it.
“George and Charlotte are studious and love to learn, so they are pretty self-sufficient when it comes to Zoom learning.
“But the school likes the children to do practical projects too.”
In 2020, Kate provided an example of the practical projects her children are expected to do – and how it created a bit of turmoil in her household.
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning, Kate said her eldest son was jealous of Charlotte’s schoolwork.
She revealed: “George gets very upset because he wants to do Charlotte’s projects.
“Because making things like spider sandwiches is far cooler than doing literacy work!”
