WELL BEHAVED: Kate has told well-wishers how she insists George has a regular routine of sleep [GETTY]The evidence suggests his mother may be among the millions who have embraced the childcare methods of controversial parenting expert Gina Ford.
The future king did not initially settle well at night. Soon after George’s birth – at 8lb 6oz he was the heaviest royal baby in 100 years – Prince William admitted as much.
He said his son was “a little bit of a rascal” who “doesn’t want to sleep that much which is a little bit of a problem”.
It was only at about five months, after Kate weaned her hungry baby on to solids a month earlier than the standard recommendation, that he started sleeping through the night.
His mother may be among the millions who have embraced the childcare methods of controversial parenting expert Gina Ford
Now, following the family’s hugely successful tour, the Sunday Express can reveal his routine is very similar to that laid down by 58-year-old Ford.
She advocates babies should have their longest daytime sleep after lunch from 12.30 to 2pm and should be bathed and in bed by 7pm in a completely blacked-out nursery to ensure they sleep through until 7am.
During the family’s visit to Australia a volunteer at Taronga Zoo in Sydney revealed a visit scheduled for 1.30pm was put back “because George was having his lunchtime sleep” and the young Prince duly turned up at 2.35pm appearing refreshed from his nap.
In another hint that she is a Ford disciple Kate confided to zoo keeper Paul Davies that George “likes the dark”, suggesting he is used to going to sleep in pitch blackness.
Former maternity nurse Ford’s Contented Little Baby Book has sold millions of copies, but while some parents praise her regimented routines, others say they are too unloving and they dislike her insistence that infants should be woken for feeds and left to “cry down” to sleep.
Parenting website Mumsnet carries thousands of threads hotly debating her methods.
The author has in the past even threatened the site with legal action after deeming some posts libellous.
Kensington Palace declines to comment.
The Queen has asked William and Kate to represent Britain at the battlefield ceremony to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.
Other heads of state, including Germany’s, will be at the event.
Prince Harry will also join the Royal couple at the St Symphorien cemetery near Mons, in Belgium, on August 4.
The Queen will make her only public appearance on the landmark date at a small Highland church near Balmoral.
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