Inevitably, whenever the Princess of Wales does an actual work event which goes well, I say “this is what she should be doing more often.” It’s true though – while I make fun of the keen peacemaker and her wiglet-collecting gopher, I don’t actually think Kate is completely useless. She’s capable of going into, say, a group for troubled children and Kate can show a lot of compassion and mom-energy. Those little kids got to meet a princess and it meant something to them. So, again, why doesn’t Kate do more of that? Why not make these kinds of visits consistently, once or twice a week? I’ll never understand how she can have this fabulous platform and a palace full of staff and no one has ever thought to regularly organize simple events like “Kate visits kids who are going through a difficult time.” Anyway, Kate visited Family Action’s Children’s Trauma Therapy Service in Bradford yesterday and she enjoyed meeting those kids and they enjoyed meeting her.
The Princess of Wales showed a five-year-old girl how to listen to the sea through a shell as she visited a trauma therapy centre in Bradford. The Princess met children at Family Action’s Children’s Trauma Therapy Service on the first of three engagements in the north of England on Tuesday chosen to highlight “the healing power of creativity, community and nature for individuals who have experienced trauma, isolation and poor mental health”.
She met a girl whose therapist was helping her make a “box of wishes” and showed her how to “listen to the sea” by holding a shell to her ear. The Princess said: “Sometimes if you put them to your ear, you can sometimes hear the sea, do you want to see if you can hear the sea? Sometimes you can hear the waves. If you listen very quietly. That’s what I like doing with shells. If you close your eyes you can sometimes imagine you’re by the beach.”
The girl replied “yes” when the Princess asked if she could hear the waves. She showed the Princess a “potion” she had made that would keep “the bad dreams” away. The Princess told the girl’s mother: “Lots of people need more of these.”
The therapist said she had also chosen some feathers for the box to keep the child’s “busy head” calm. The girl’s mother said her daughter had loved meeting the Princess, telling the Press Association: “I don’t know how I’m going to get her back after this. She’s very busy-minded, she’s normally covered in slime.”
The Princess is a patron of Family Action, a national charity which helps children aged four to 18 and their families recover from trauma. It works with families that have experienced adversity, abuse and traumatic bereavement.
The Princess also met a 12-year-old boy who described using music during his therapy sessions, and told her how he now played the drums in a school band because he loves instruments “I can smack”.
“Exactly, and that’s a fantastic way to express yourself and also manage really difficult and hard feelings that are sometimes harder to express with words,” the Princess said.
I mean, seven-plus years full of Early Years expertise taught Kate to keep it pretty simple – talk about seashells and music and how hard it is to express emotion. If a child told me she made a potion to keep bad dreams away, I would probably cry because that poor kid has probably been through a lot. But Kate kept it light. Anyway, I loved seashells as a kid and I loved to “listen” to them.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
