Prince Louis is growing up – and it’s breaking his parents’ hearts

It won’t get better, Wills – in fact, it’s only going to get worse

Prince William may have laughed off Prince Louis’s brutal rebuttal on his first day of a brand new school yesterday – the youngest royal refused to hold his dad’s hand – but he really shouldn’t. Because it’s only going to get worse.

Take it from me, Wills: I’m two years on from where you are – and I took my little boy to school for his first day of Year 2 on Monday. He’s six to Louis’s four, but he wouldn’t hold my hand, either. In fact, he shrugged off a kiss or any overt sign of affection entirely and only begrudgingly allowed me the briefest of hugs before retousling his hair to make it as (intentionally) unkempt as possible.

So, watching Kate Middleton and Prince William strolling in on the first day, flanking their children – only for “Boss Baby” Prince Louis to shrug off his dad’s efforts at a PDA – made my heart ache. He did hold his mum’s hand as he walked, but merely glanced at his dad’s outstretched palm before totally ignoring him. Wills, then, was forced to settle for a simple stroke of his son’s hair at the school gates, with one person on Twitter commenting wrly: “Prince Louis is not about holding Dad’s hand today.”

There, any similarities I may claim personally to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as parents on the school run end, however; for my kids go to the local state primary, rather than the £53,000-per-year (for all three children) Lambrook School in Windsor, which is set in 52 acres of Berkshire countryside close to Ascot Racecourse, and follows the family’s move from Kensington Palace to their new four-bedroom home – Adelaide Cottage in Windsor’s Home Park. The school has a nine-hole golf course and swimming pool, as well as bees, chickens and pigs for pupils to look after (about as far from an east London comp as you can get).

But my empathy for the painful loss of your progeny’s babyhood – the “blink and you’ve missed it” feeling of watching them mature, and before you know it they’re all grown – is endless and aching and not exclusive to my friends and peers, but to the Cambridges too.

This week, a colleague penned a beautiful ode to his daughters, to celebrate/commiserate his eldest’s first day at school. “As per cliche,” he wrote, “I am astonished that someone born – what? – last week? – is suddenly a proper, fully-fledged child.

“That this chunk of life is now drawing to a close feels melancholic in a way I wasn’t expecting. I’ve also come to the conclusion that the joy of being a parent is a three-way, time-split agony.”

I know how he feels. And seeing footage of the Cambridges walking into school together as a family and witnessing the tender, amusing moment that every parent experiences, royal or not, made me realise that there’s something Prince Louis and his siblings wouldn’t – and couldn’t – possibly understand: that this kind of gesture is for the adult, just as much (or much more) than the child. It’s the physical reassurance we need that you’re going to be okay at school – that we will survive this seismic, painful separation.

It’s about leaving an imprint (or a palm print) of the years when you needed us all the time, at the very moment you stand on the precipice of independence. It is bittersweet. We rejoice at the very same time as we mourn it –the days are long, but the years are short, as the old adage goes.

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I distinctly remember the moment I decided on a whim that I was too old to kiss my parents goodnight, so just stopped doing it. I didn’t stop to notice how my mum and dad’s hearts probably broke as I strutted out of the kitchen on my way to bed, all lit up inside by the tantalising promise of autonomy.

Kate and Wills may be privileged royals, with the ability to afford to send their kids to one of the top private schools in the country – but they’re also human, with exactly the same emotions as any of us.

And I’d be willing to bet that this tiny, almost unnoticeable moment when Prince Louis refused to hold his dad’s hand will play on William’s mind, like it has on mine.