As members of the Royal Family go, Kate Middleton is one of the most well-respected royals. There are many reasons for this, ranging from her keen fashion sense to her killer social media presence. Mostly, though, people respond to Kate because she is down-to-earth and relatable… pretty much the last way we’d expect to describe the future Queen of England.
And if you don’t think it’s easy to relate to Kate, just look at her interactions with the future King of England. No, we’re not talking about Prince William but about their oldest son, Prince George. Kate has an awesome and inspirational relationship with her son that we could all stand to learn from.
Don’t believe it? Keep reading to learn all about the relationship between Kate and George!
Preparing George for the throne
While Kate Middleton has three children, George presents a unique challenge. She can’t simply raise him to be a good human being the same way she raises the others. Instead, she also has to raise him to be a good king (something that he hopefully won’t have to worry about for many decades).
How is she going about that? In a word, slowly! According to Marie Claire, royal expert Robert Lacey wrote that “Sometime around the boy’s seventh birthday in the summer of 2020 it is thought that his parents went into more detail about what the little prince’s life of future royal ‘service and duty’ would particularly involve.”
Fortunately, Kate is taking her time doing this, and she wants to give George the chance to have a normal childhood before becoming a working royal. Towards this end, she decided not to send him to boarding school (typically a royal tradition), and George joined the rest of the family when they ditched London to live in the comparative country isolation of Windsor.
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A fun, photographic tradition
One thing you might not know about Kate Middleton is that she’s a photographer, and a damned good one. She always handles the family photos rather than leaving them to a servant. And over the years, her love of both photography and George led to a fun new family tradition.
Starting with his very first birthday, Kate began taking photos of George and then uploading them to her royal Instagram account to help him celebrate. This continued in 2022 when she posted another cracking picture of the future King of England. The captions are usually short and to the point, like “George is turning 9!”, but it’s impossible to look at these images and not see the proud mama behind every single photo.
Fostering a love of the outdoors
Pop quiz: what do you envision when you think about the Royal Family?
It’s difficult to not imagine royals in bland suits walking the halls of fancy places like Kensington Palace. However, Kate Middleton thinks it’s very important for George and the other children to spend plenty of time playing outdoors rather than roaming around stuffy old halls.
She said as much, in fact, when she appeared on the podcast “Happy Mum, Happy Baby.” During the podcast, Kate revealed that “As children, we spent a lot of time outside, and it’s something I’m really passionate about.” Furthermore, “I think it’s so great for physical and mental well-being and laying those foundations.”
Honestly, this is pretty good advice. Royal or not, couldn’t we all use a bit more time outdoors?
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George’s adorable first royal engagement
It’s easy to joke about the Royal Family not having real jobs, but the truth is that being a royal means attending a number of public royal engagements throughout each year. Pretty much every royal has to participate, so it was only a matter of time before George, as the future King of England, had his own first royal engagement.
As it turned out, George’s first engagement was adorable and helped create a new family tradition. Decades before, Prince William attended his own first royal engagement in New Zealand in 1983 (don’t worry: Youtube has the receipts). And in 2014, William and Kate took George to New Zealand for his own engagement. Now, George was only eight months old at the time, so this engagement was mostly limited to crawling around, playing with toys, and meeting other kids. But it’s good to see that he is learning to hang out with the common man from a very young age.
Wimbledon and a growing love of athletics
A lesser-known royal tradition involves a love of athletics. For example, Prince William and Prince Harry have been known to enjoy a good game of rugby from time to time. And now, it looks like Kate helped the family love of rugby rub off on Prince George.
According to Hello!, Kate let George join the rugby team at his school, and she thinks he is perfectly built for the sport. “Because he is tall, he has the physique.” Of course, as his tackling partner at home, she is likely going to regret George’s growing physique as he barrels into her at high speeds.
While George is mostly focused on rugby right now, Kate has also tried to instill a love of tennis in him. She took him to his first Wimbledon match in 2022, and according to the Daily Star, Kate ditched the other two kids one day and just brought her eldest because “It’s George’s treat today.” Sounds like a perfect excuse for some mommy/son bonding!
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Navigating George’s envy of his siblings
On paper, you’d think that George’s siblings would be very jealous of him. After all, he’s the future King of England. And as Prince Harry’s sulking memoir Spare reminds us, there can be only one “heir,” and the rest are “spares.”
However, to hear Kate Middleton tell it, it’s actually George that often gets jealous of his siblings. One such incident occurred in 2020 when Kate was homeschooling her children during the COVID-19 pandemic. As reported by E! Online, George got annoyed during the pandemic that his younger siblings were getting simpler assignments than he was. “George gets very upset because he wants to do all of Charlotte’s projects … making sort of spider sandwiches is far cooler than literacy work.”
While that may have just been an understandable annoyance at having to do more work, Kate has also described an occasional competitive rivalry between George and his younger brother Louis. As reported by People, the two boys were both planting flowers at a children’s hospital and George grew annoyed that his baby brother was simply better at the task. “The children are really enjoying growing their sunflowers,” Kate said. “Louis’ is winning, so George is a little grumpy about that!”
Let’s just hope these two brothers don’t take things too far and start to carry judges. The last thing we need is another bitter rivalry like what now exists between Prince William and Prince Harry.