‘Normal’ school a royal test for mums

KERRY PARNELL

THE school run is pressured enough without a prince and princess joining your kid’s class. Can you imagine how stressed the other mums of children in Prince George and Princess Charlotte’s classes must be?

As Charlotte beamed — well, pulled a cheeky face — for the cameras on her first day at school on Thursday, my thoughts were with the other parents.

Because let’s face it, when the world’s media is camped out you can’t very well rock up with wet hair and clad in your slippers because you mistimed the morning run, can you?

Not when the other parents include Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, a woman who has never knowingly left her house, sorry, palace, with a hair out of place.

Admittedly, the parents of George’s classmates probably weren’t aware that he was even likely to attend Thomas’s Battersea when they put their kid’s name down for the $34,000-a-year private primary school. After all, who needs Elsa when your daughter is in with a chance of attending a real princess party? You can bet there is a waiting list already for 2022’s intake, which will most likely include Prince Louis.

William and Catherine enrolled their children in this formerly unassuming school because they wanted their kids to have a “normal childhood”.

But what they wouldn’t have considered was the classmates’ families behaving as far from normal as can be.

The mothers must be dressing up to the eyeballs at drop-off, buying cakes from Fortnum & Mason for the bake sale and spending megabucks on parties that could include a prince.

Then there’s the worry of what to buy a royal child for their birthday.

When George turned six in July he asked his whole class to Kensington Palace for a football-themed bash. You can bet the parents upped their usual $20 gift budget.

But A for Effort and panic-shopping has to go to the teacher snapped in the official first day photos. At least Helen Haslem, head of lower school, has had some practice – when George started school two years ago she went all out in a blush pink L.K. Bennett dress and ballet flats for her big moment in front of the world’s cameras. So successful was her Miss Honey get-up that she became an internet sensation.

This year Ms Honey-haslem sported a $450 blue polka dot frock.

As Charlotte begins her school life, my thoughts are with the little princess and the other parents, who after all, are the ones who’ll really have to do their homework.