How Princess Diana Inspired Prince William's Approach to Parenting

"My mother would talk to us a bit about [homelessness] and it definitely made a really big impact."

Prince William is opening up about how his mother's influence is still impacting his approach to parenting, specifically when it comes to teaching his children about the wider world.

In a clip from the upcoming documentary, Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, which airs in the UK on ITV on October 30 and 31, William revealed that his mother, Princess Diana, used to be open with him and his brother, Prince Harry, about unhoused people.

"When you are that small you are just curious and trying to work out what’s going on. You ask the question 'Why are they sitting there?' My mother would talk to us a bit about why they were there and it definitely made a really big impact," Prince William said in the documentary, per Hello!.

Apparently, this inspired William to do the same with his own children, George, Charlotte, and Louis.

"I am probably already doing it on the school run," William said. "The first few times I thought, 'Do I bring this up or should I wait to see if they notice?' Sure enough, they did. They were sort of in silence when I said what was going on."

For William, teaching his children about homelessness is "really important," because it means they'll have a better understanding of "the world around them, rather than just living in their own worlds."

In another clip from the upcoming documentary, William explained that Diana brought him and Harry to The Passage, a London homelessness charity, when he was 11 and that experience gave him a new awareness of the bigger picture. The clip also marked William's first public mention of Harry in years.

"My mother took me to The Passage she took Harry and I both there. I must have been 11 at the time, maybe 10. I had never been to anything like that before, and I was a bit anxious about what to expect," William said, adding, "You know, when you’re quite small, you just think life is what you see in front of you and you don’t really have concept to look elsewhere. It's when you meet people, as I did then, who put a different perspective in your head and say, 'Well, I was living on the street last night,' and you’re like, 'Woah.' I remember that happening."

In 2019, William became a patron of The Passage, and in 2005, he became a patron of Centrepoint, a U.K.-based charity to provide support for young homeless people between the ages of 16 and 25. Back in July of this year, William announced that he was planning on taking his three children to visit a homeless shelter just as his own mother had done when he was young. In September, William visited London's Saatchi Gallery to view an art exhibition entitled Homelessness: Reframed.