When they became parents, it was inevitable that Prince William and Kate would find themselves learning new things, but the Princess of Wales might not have thought she’d have to teach her husband quite a common childhood game.
Exploring the royal couple’s personal lives and just how they continued to learn new things about one another years into their relationship, royal author Tom Quinn claimed that Kate had to show Prince William what a piggyback was - something he rather sadly revealed he’d never experienced himself as a youngster.
In his book, Yes Ma'am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, Tom suggests a maid told him, "[Kate] had to show him how to give the children a piggyback, for example. William said very quietly, 'My father never gave me a piggyback.'"
He added, “Kate had to explain many of the things that parents outside the royal family do with their children as a matter of course.”
The insider went on to suggest, “I don't know where William would be without Kate - she hasn't had everything done for her throughout her life, so she calms him down when he gets a bit fractious.
"She said he sometimes has to be treated as her fourth child."
This isn’t the first time it’s been suggested that William experienced a whole other way of being thanks to Kate, and his in-laws. In fact, one royal source has previously suggested William was actually influenced by this less formal way of life he picked up from the Middletons.
Previously reported in the Daily Mail, a royal source claimed, "That the Middletons had to nip to the shop for food, ensure there was enough bread in the house, empty their own bins and put out the recycling on the right day were all refreshing".
They suggest that "William found the informality eye-opening" and something as trivial as “laying a tablecloth was a struggle” at first for the future King. But it was thanks to this that allegedly helped William and Catherine as they lived together for the first time in Anglesey. The couple were there during William’s time working as an RAF Search and Rescue Pilot.
When William was first sent to the supermarket “his first experience of a big shop following Carole’s detailed lists was apparently mind-boggling”.
Now, as a result, it could be why the pair have "introduced a lot of relative informality into home life” at their Windsor Great Park home, Forest Lodge. The couple are thought to make their three children - Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis - do their own chores like any other children, and they enjoy a level of informality that’s closer to Kate’s upbringing than William’s.
Indeed, one rule that they are reportedly adamant on is no live-in staff at their home. Royal biographer Ingrid Seward has previously shared, "William and Kate have never wanted live-in staff; I think that’s the modern way.
“Since William was a little boy, he’s seen all the staff at the late Queen’s homes, and he never wanted that. It’s not something Kate grew up with either."
