Do Your Kids Play At Being Royalty?

[AnnaNotherThing]

No they don't because I don't encourage it...it is not the best to encourage your kids to aspire to something that I see as token and elitist...But that is just crusty old me

 

[Daria_S]

I personally didn't play 'Princess' because I spent my early childhood in USSR, where anything monarchy-related was frowned upon. However, I did read a good deal of books that dealt with children of the upper classes before the Revolution, and sometimes my classmate and I would pretend that we're children who have aristocracy for parents and have governesses and pretty dresses. Thankfully, the teacher didn't say anything.

When I was working at a daycare center, one of the girls adored Disney princesses (Aurora was her favorite), and she always wanted to be her. She even dressed as her for Halloween.

When I was student teaching, we were discussing careers and one of the girls said that she wanted to be Kate Middleton, so that she could go to university and marry a prince. I thought that was rather funny, but I had to tell her that that position was already filled.

 

[COUNTESS]

No, because my children would have thought it an idiotic idea. To them, even, today, it it an anachronisim, that exists in some places. Personally, my sister and I did play some of these games, but we also played witches and dragons and stuff like that. Never considered it was real.

 

[Lenora]

Telling stories about royals to children

I've never had such a case before,but last week my cousin asked me to tell her 12 years old daughter something interesting connected with royal history and modern royals(in English).Basically,it seems simple enough to tell some elementary things,but she got interested and I began thinking about some interesting materials or tales.She enjoyed very much watching Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's interview and wedding.Of course it is quite simple from one side,as there is a plenty of books and articles (including Wiki)about royalty.

Anyway it would be interesting to know the different ideas about other materials and about what royals you should have told to a child or a teenager.

 

[MisterMehmet]

i told children of story of teh queen of england and i say she is old woman with many jewls and crowns and has a good and long family. but i say it's not gr8 that they divorced and they laugh so much when i tell that princess diana says camilla looks like a dog. they can not understand.

 

[PrincessKaimi]

I think the fact that the Queen Mother was Scottish, and descended from Scots and Welsh royalty is interesting. As far as I can tell, Prince Charles would have very little Welsh in him (or no Welsh at all) had his grandmother not been Miss Bowes-Lyon. The fact that Elizabeth's family turned Strathmore into a hospital during World War I and hired nurses, while Elizabeth provided emotional support to soldiers is also fascinating. Strathmore got a reputation for being able to comfort and rehabilitate the soldiers with the worst shell shock, and Elizabeth was credited with much of that success. She kept in touch with some of the men for the rest of their lives. She turned her future husband down on his first two marriage proposals, but then accepted and went on to become the mother of Queen Elizabeth. Naturally, a teenager would probably like watching the movie The King's Speech after hearing about Elizabeth.

Helen Mirren's The Queen is another excellent bit of modern media that a teen or child might enjoy. The importance of horses to both Queen Elizabeth and her mother (they divided up their interests, I believe Queen Elizabeth took the "racehorse" bit and the Queen Mother took the "steeplechase" bit - someone correct me here if I've got it wrong...is interesting to a child (and of course watching the original National Velvet, while not about royalty, is still about a sport that royals and aristocrats still favor (along with polo), and Princess Anne is of course, an incredible horsewoman.

I think the fact that the Queen married for love and is still with her handsome prince is a lot of fun for a child (and there are youtube videos of her, much younger, introducing us to the Crown Jewels, and bits of news about her coronation and, I believe, her wedding).

And don't you think kids and teens would enjoy seeing pictures of Prince Charles and company in their kilts? Both of his parents have a bit of Scottish blood in them, and they are very proud of it (although the amount of geography a child or teen would learn just by looking at the immediate ancestry of Elizabeth and Philip is amazing: Elizabeth's great grandmother was a Danish princess; Prince Phillip's father was of course Prince of Greece and Denmark, his paternal grandfather was King of Greece, his great grandfather was King of Denmark, one of his great great grandfathers was Nicholas I, Tsar of all the Russias.

My kids still find it interesting (they are in their 20's) that Prince Phillip's great great grandmother was Queen Victoria - who is also Queen Elizabeth's great great grandmother. So that makes them third cousins, I believe (someone correct me here, again, if I am wrong).

That's what comes to mind, anyway. What a fun topic.

 

[Daria_S]

I remember trying to get my younger sister into royalty by showing her pictures of the children of the last Tsar of Russia. She thought they were very pretty, and wanted to know more about them. At the end though, all she wanted was to look at pictures of younger Nikolai II (when he was a pre-teen/teen), because she found him good-looking. All interest in the concept of royalty or its' historical impact was gone.

When I was student teaching last spring, I wanted to talk to my group of second and third graders about Faberge Easter eggs (we were coloring eggs, and I thought it would be interesting). When I told them that these eggs were made of jewels and belonged to different European Royal Houses (now of course primarily the Windsors), they started asking questions about how one becomes a monarch. I tried to explain, and afterwards, wished I used the classroom computer to go on the British Monarchy site and see what was there for primary school students.

I think the key is to start out with something that will get the child hooked; be it some fancy jewel, or a picture of someone royal close to the child's age, that way, there can be a connection to the child, and the concept won't be seen as foreign as it might if introduced randomly and from a historical perspective.

 

[Lenora]

Thank You for your suggestions!

 

[fandesacs2003]

I do not have children, but when I was a kid I was constantly playing Sissy, and especially when she was chosen by Emperor Franz-Josef, instead of her sister Elena!

This was my fisrt contact to royalty!

 

[Rhys82192]

Well in France, there is a family tradition held every January 6, Feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord (or the Adoration of the Magi), where children eat a flat almond pie called a "galette". On each galette, there is a charm hidden within it, and the son/daughter who finds that charm will be crowned King/Queen of the Night, and the whole family will do whatever he/she commands at them!