Happy fourth birthday, Louis – from one third child to another
NEXT week, Prince Louis will celebrate his fourth birthday with his elder siblings, George, eight, and Charlotte, six. Here, as another third-born (and also a proud father of three), BBC presenter NICK ROBINSON writes an open letter of birthday wishes to the fifth in line to the throne...
Dear Louis,
Happy Birthday! I’m afraid I haven’t got you a present, but as the youngest in your family, you don’t really need one. That alone is the gift that keeps on giving and one that lasts a lifetime.
You are – and you always will be – the baby. I’m nearly 60 and at this weekend’s Easter family gathering, I’ve still felt like the little one.
I always feel it’s right to wait for my big brother and sister to have their say before I have mine. This will, I suspect, come as a surprise to them as I’m not exactly renowned for my verbal reticence. For, as one of my nieces once told me, I’m paid to ‘burble for a living’.
We little ones get used to listening, to looking and learning as our older siblings pick their way through the minefield of childhood.
In the early years, family explosions might be triggered by what you will, and won’t, eat, what’s left on your plate or the words you must and really mustn’t use. (I never can remember – is it ‘toilet’ or ‘lavatory’?)
We youngest don’t necessarily behave better but we do learn how to avoid trouble.
For we’re blessed by being born with our own personal trusted guides to the challenges that life throws up.
My big brother Mark taught me how to react to being attacked by a gang.
My big sister Debbie gave me tips for ‘coolness’ that still come to mind when I’m getting dressed to go out. I remember her stopping me at the door and insisting “undo your top buttons!”
If I get into real trouble – like when I got my cancer diagnosis a few years ago – I know I can turn to them. In addition to all those privileges, we little ones get freedoms that our older siblings could only dream of.
By the time you’re a teenager, your mum and dad will be too exhausted to even think about imposing the rules that George and Charlotte will have had to wrestle with.
My own eldest child still resents the fact that her little brother was allowed to watch Teletubbies, which had previously been banned in our house on the grounds that ‘you’re not watching a programme in which they don’t talk properly!’ Perhaps, though, it’s not exhaustion that leads parents to relax their grip so that life is much more chilled for the youngest. It is experience and wisdom acquired from years of the struggle to bring kids up properly. A recognition, too, that some fights just aren’t worth having.
Indeed, all those of us who are the youngest are apprentices of life who benefit from the pioneers who came before us: our brothers and sisters.
What must be really galling for them is that not only do we have an easier start in life thanks to them, but that we will always be – whatever we say, whatever we do and how old we are – the little one.
Have a great birthday on Saturday! Yours, Nick