Prince Harry Opens Up About How Royal Stress Affected His Relationship with Prince Archie
Prince Harry shared how he learned to manage stress before spending time with his son.
Prince Harry's feud with the Royal Family is no secret to anyone, but the Duke recently revealed that the conflict also created turbulence at home with his son. Harry, in a recent interview, recalled how his son, Prince Archie, could sense his heavy emotions whenever he returned home after dealing with the pressures of royal life. He shared how he learned to manage his stress before spending time with his son, emphasizing why parents need to be mindful of the emotions they bring around their children.
During a recent interview with GQ's Zach Baron, Harry reflected on the early days of fatherhood, when he and Meghan Markle were living at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor. The Prince admitted that things were difficult for him at the time, and he frequently had to travel. Recalling those days, he added, “There’s an energetic piece to this, which I never appreciated, never realized. When Archie was born, and I had to go back into London and do the 40-minute drive in and out of London, I was so stressed with everything that was happening and everything that I was having to deal with."
The Duke continued, “I would come back, and I would literally take Archie off of Meghan. And if I was still stressed, he would feel it immediately.” Realizing this was not healthy for the baby, Harry began using his daily commute to manage his emotions before returning home. "I got into this habit of, right, okay, now I’m gonna use this 40-minute drive to be able to try and just get [calm],” he explained. Harry then described how Archie responded when he held him after making an effort to relax. “I go, and I hold him, and he leans into me. I’m like, ‘Whoa, okay. So the energy is a real thing.’”
The Duke also shared a message for other parents, stressing the importance of understanding their emotions and recognizing how they might affect their children. “I think as a parent, we’ve just got to be so conscious about what we carry that they can pick up,” he said, before adding, “That we know how we’re feeling, and maybe we don’t know how we’re feeling. Your kids will be the first people to tell you because they won’t want to hang out with you.”
Harry added that parents should not blame themselves when they cannot always manage their emotions perfectly. However, he believes that working through past experiences can make a difference. The Prince opined, “It’s not always gonna be possible, and you shouldn’t really put that on yourself, but where it is possible, where you can try to heal yourself from the past—even heal yourself from the last week—for their sake, you should absolutely do that.”
