Pregnant Princess Beatrice speaks movingly about her experience of dyslexia

Royal mother-to-be Princess Beatrice has spoken movingly about her experience of dyslexia – and says that if her unborn child is ‘lucky enough’ to be diagnosed with it, then she will see that as a ‘gift’.

The Queen’s granddaughter, 33, whose first child is due later this year, was herself diagnosed with the learning difficulty, which can affect reading, writing and spelling, when she was seven.

But while she had support from an early age, Beatrice says many children struggle undiagnosed.

The princess – seen at a lunch with friends in a floral jacket with her husband Edo Mapelli Mozzi last week – revealed in an interview with Hello! magazine that he also has the condition.

She also described her role as a stepmother to Edo’s son Wolfie, five, calling him her ‘bonus son’ – but admitted that home-schooling him during lockdown had been a challenge.

Beatrice was talking to author Giovanna Fletcher for Hello!’s Back to School digital issue, online now.

The Duke and Duchess of York’s daughter said that ‘if any child, any bonus son, or future babies that are on their way, are lucky enough to be diagnosed with dyslexia, I feel incredibly grateful to have tools such as the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity [that she’s patron of] to be able to tap into, to give them that extra support.’

She said: ‘My husband’s also dyslexic… but I really see it as a gift.’

Beatrice added: ‘I think life is about the moments, it’s the challenges that make you. Of course, I would never want there to be any difficult situations.

‘But I feel like if we’re able to embrace some of the tools that we have from the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity and other organisations, then I feel very, very lucky that we can have this conversation.’

Speaking about her step-son, Beatrice, who married her husband in a private ceremony at Windsor last year, said: ‘Homeschooling, that was definitely not my forte! Not going to lie. Sadly, I can’t blame that on dyslexia.

‘But I’ve felt very lucky to have had the chance to work with my bonus son (Wolfie) over the course of the school closures. It was a huge learning curve for all of us.’

Beatrice also spoke openly about her passion to increase understanding of dyslexia and de-stigmatise any negative associations with it.

The princess, who admitted that she struggled to understand why words appeared so ‘muddled’ before her diagnosis, said she hoped sharing her own story would help ‘shift the narrative’.

‘I was very lucky that when I was first told that I had dyslexia, not one person around me ever made me feel like it was a ‘lesser than’ scenario. It was always about moving forward, it was always about what you could do. Never about what you can’t,’ she explained.

‘That’s something that’s really, really important to me. I find it very inspiring every day to talk about it. Because if you can just change one little idea in someone’s head, then you’ve done a great thing.

‘I think that having dyslexia and reflecting on where I am right now in my career path, and also as an older person looking back, it definitely has allowed me to look at things in a new way and come up with solutions.

‘I always describe it like being able to think in a circle. Yes, my spelling is appalling, and I wish that I could do something about that. But, luckily, spellcheck has sorted that out for me!’