As the parents of three children, we began by taking great pains in caring for Phoebe, our first born. Then we slackened a bit with her younger brother, Phoebus. When Fabian, the youngest, arrived, we had run out of energy and pretty much let him have his own way from early on.
The two elder siblings were envious and protested that we were far less strict with Fabian.
For his part, Fabian revealed early on that he was very strong-willed. He told us one day when he was still at kindergarten that, seeing how busy we were, he had forged my signature on the student handbook and handed it in without bothering us.
He had difficulty understanding why this might be wrong. He learned to play the piano when he was six but still did things his way. One day, he came home from primary school to declare: 'The music teacher asked me to be accompanist for the choir. I turned her down.'
It never occurred to him that he should consult his parents first.
Fabian's sense of self-confidence verged on pompousness. On Mother's Day, for instance, he would hand-paint a card to present to Helena my wife, with the scrawled words 'You must be a proud mother to have a son like me!'
