Posted on 05/14/2004 9:49:55 PM PDT by neverdem
After I wrote a column a few weeks ago about the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, I got e-mail from Tom Klebold, the father of Dylan Klebold, one of the shooters. Tom objected to the column, but the striking thing about his note was that while acknowledging the horrible crime his son had committed, Tom was still fiercely loyal toward him. Which prompts this question: If your child commits a crime like that, what do you do with the rest of your life?
Tom and Susan Klebold have not really spoken to the press about all this. But the lawsuits against them are being settled, and they trust The New York Times, which is the paper they read every day, so they were willing to have a long conversation with me this week.
They are a well-educated, reflective, highly intelligent couple (Dylan was named after Dylan Thomas). During our conversation they discussed matters between themselves, as well as answering my questions. Their son, by the way, is widely seen as the follower, who was led by Eric Harris into this nightmare.
The Klebolds describe the day of the shootings as a natural disaster, as a "hurricane" or a "rain of fire." They say they had no intimations of Dylan's mental state. Tom, who works from home and saw his son every day, had spent part of the previous week with Dylan scoping out dorm rooms for college the next year.
When they first heard about the shootings, it did not occur to them that Dylan could be to blame. When informed, Susan said, "we ran for our lives." They went into hiding, desperate for information. "We didn't know what had happened," she said. "We couldn't grieve for our child."
That first night, their lawyer said to them, "Dylan isn't here anymore for people to hate, so people are going to hate you." Even as we spoke this week, Tom had in front of him the poll results, news stories and documents showing that 83 percent of Americans had believed the parents were partly to blame. Their lives are now pinioned to this bottomless question: Who is responsible?
They feel certain of one thing. "Dylan did not do this because of the way he was raised," Susan said. "He did it in contradiction to the way he was raised."
After the shooting, they faced a simple choice: to move away and change their names, or to go back and resume their lives. Susan thinks about leaving every day. "I won't let them win," Tom said. "You can't run from something like this."
So they live in the same house and work at the same jobs. Susan works in the community college system. "It's amazing how long it took me to get up and say my name at a meeting, to say, `I'm Dylan Klebold's mother,' " Susan says. "Dylan could have killed any number of the kids of people that I work with."
In general, Tom said, "most people have been good-hearted." Their friends rallied around. Their neighbors call to warn them if an unfamiliar car lurks in the neighborhood. There is a moment of discomfort when they hand over a credit card at a store, but there have been few bad scenes. One clerk looked at the name and remarked to Susan, "Boy, you're a survivor, aren't you."
The most infuriating incident, Susan said, came when somebody said, "I forgive you for what you've done." Susan insists, "I haven't done anything for which I need forgiveness."
When they talk about the event, they discuss it as a suicide. They acknowledge but do not emphasize the murders their son committed. They also think about the signs they missed. "He was hopeless. We didn't realize it until after the end," Tom said. Susan added: "I think he suffered horribly before he died. For not seeing that, I will never forgive myself."
They believe that what they call the "toxic culture" of the school — the worship of jocks and the tolerance of bullying — is the primary force that set Dylan off. But they confess that in the main, they have no explanation.
"I'm a quantitative person," said Tom, a former geophysicist. "We're not qualified to sort this out." They long for some authoritative study that will provide an answer. "People need to understand," Tom said, "this could have happened to them."
My instinct is that Dylan Klebold was a self-initiating moral agent who made his choices and should be condemned for them. Neither his school nor his parents determined his behavior. Now his parents have been left with the terrible consequences. I'd say they are facing them bravely and honorably.
"It's easy to be a good parent to a great kid. It is MUCH harder to be a good parent to a kid with difficulties."
You nailed it. You can also have a very disturbed kid who can act pretty darn normal on the outside. The kids who act out at least vent their feelings. It's the quiet ones that often blow without any warning.
If you don't mind, would you elaborate on what you saw in those toddlers that caused you to make those predictions?
<< I thought it was all the guns' fault. >>
Nope.
Turns out it was them darned jocks, again.
That tends to be a huge difference in some situations.
Yes, but making a child 'feel' loved isn't always easy, or even possible.
Not that this implies the quiet ones are more likely to blow than the troublesome ones. Rather, since warning signs would often cause kids not to be described as 'quiet ones', the statement would seem to boil down to "Kids who don't give warning signs are more likely to blow without warning than those that do give warning signs, since the latter by definition can't blow without warning."
One thing parents can do when their children seem unreachable is PRAY for them.
I disagree with this writer's statement. Yes, they loved their son, and grieve for him now. As a parent, there is nothing my children could do that would make me lose my love for them.
But loving their child, and not showing more compassion for the innocent victims, are two very different things. I would think instead of honoring their child's life and the heinous crimes he committed, they could use their time in a more positive way. Giving bleeding heart interviews to the New York Times is not the answer.
Possibly, they could reach out to other troubled teens, and use their experience to try to prevent such a horrific episode from happening again.
There go those inconvenient morals again. And how could this happen to people so much like the interviewer? BARF
The most infuriating incident, Susan said, came when somebody said, "I forgive you for what you've done." Susan insists, "I haven't done anything for which I need forgiveness."
Then, 1 sentence later......
"I think he suffered horribly before he died. For not seeing that, I will never forgive myself."
Anybody else see the contradiction.....
Our minds cannot comprehend such thinking which also explains how we didn't see 9/11 coming.
And why we are so horrified at the glee exhibited by the subhumans that beheaded Nicholas Berg.
No contradiction.
The stranger who "forgave" Susan was seizing a moral high ground that she had done nothing to earn. She was playing the morally superior victim when she was not in the least the aggrieved party.
Susan is not responsible for her son's sins and she owed this person no apology.
A question, though. Where did all those guns come from ? Were they Klebold's or Harris's or both ? Now if they were Klebold's and she was sitting back doing nothing while her son was amassing enough firepower to outfit a squad, then she was grossly derelict of her duty.
I agree, but bullying in schools has made generations of kids miserable. Adolescence is hard enough, but to be terrified to go to school because you know you'll be the butt of endless jokes and physical abuse is a living nightmare. If you're different, don't fit in, you get picked on, and it starts way back in kindergarten. The parents failed to deal with their son's predicament, but they had to know he wasn't happy. If he didn't want to talk to them, and most kids prefer not to confide stuff like this to their parents, they should have gone down to the school and had a talk with the guidance counselor. Usually, they know what's going on. And that's another thing. Why did the school allow a climate where the only remedy these kids could come up with was killing as many of their classmates as possible? I hope somebody sued the school.
Today's suicide bombers are oppressed by their own backward, medieval, fanatical-minded, homicidal culture. Assuaging their resentments without addressing this cultural pig sty will simply whet their appetite for dominance through mass murder. As we know, this goes way back to Iran, the fall of the Shah, and Jimmy Peanut-brain Carter.
i AGREE
that given some temperaments, it is sometimes
NOT EASY.
I disagree that it's not POSSIBLE.
The problem is, parents are not willing to pay the price
AND do not start earnestly enough, selfLESSly enough to get the child STARTED in their first awarenesses on that track.
I have seen incredibly difficult kids who even late in the game could have been turned from a life of disaster
IF
the parents had been
WILLING
to pay the price.
If they had been willing the first months of life, the price would not have been near so steep, no matter how difficult. AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH EASIER; MUCH *MORE* POSSIBLE.
I will also assert:
PARENTS WILL PAY THE PRICE
sooner or later
. . . in earnest, creative, persistent, tireless, healthy, intense LOVING actions
OR
in GRIEF, LAWYER'S BILLS, HOURS LOST IN COURT, SLEEPLESS NIGHTS, LIABILITIES, INSURANCE RATES . . .
It's a delusion of satan that one can raise kids on the cheap and with cheap words of love and things instead of actions of love.
I usually do much better with a specific case in front of me to answer such a question--and less well in the abstract. But I'll try . . .
1) Bottom line super key--REBELLION AND DEFIANCE. Keep in mind the adage--DISCIPLINE WITHOUT SUFFICIENT RELATIONSHIP PRODUCES REBELLION. And rebellion and defiance can be observed in the first month of life. If it's still winning out over the parents' wills by the 3-6th month of life and certainly by the 12th month of life, then the child is definitely headed for trouble. If it's still true by the 4th year of life, then the teen years will be hell on all the family.
2) Withdrawn, angry, enclosed, encased demeanors, actions. Now Autism and related problems are another ball park. I'm talking here about more or less physically etc. normal kids.
3) Obsessive people pleasers, super insecure, super manipulative, devious demeanors and actions.
4) Chronic lying, stealing, stubbornness, stubborn pouting relentlessly.
5) A certain look in the eye, spirit about the child that spells TROUBLE.
6) I'll note here--though I'll likely lose a number of you--IT IS VERY, RARE--used to be anyway--for children to be born with a serious demonic problem--whether oppressed or possessed. But it does happen. That sort of problem usually requires serious prayer and fasting on the part of the parents and some members of the church group. Usually, the parents are as rife with demonic problems as the children. That then requires a larger group effort or some comparable spiritual umph to deal with--even to get the parents free enough or listening to God enough to WANT to be free. BTW, I've even seen pets possessed. And the home was not free until either the pet was delivered or removed from the home--calamities still abounded until then. Stopped immediately afterward.
7) Extreme chronic apathy, vacantness, absent--rarely to never PRESENT.
Apparently neither set of parents bothered to notice their kids even had difficulties. That's not good parenting. The Klebolds are in such denial -
"I'm a quantitative person," said Tom, a former geophysicist. "We're not qualified to sort this out." They long for some authoritative study that will provide an answer. "People need to understand," Tom said, "this could have happened to them."
The father admits his lack of parenting skills which goes back to the old saying about the need get a license to have kids. He needs a study to tell him he failed to see the signs? Hmm, lets see, how about taking a look in his son's room and getting to know his son's friends? Eric's parents were just as dense. How many homemade bombs does one have to move off the coffee table to buy a clue?
I'm just curious, do you have children of your own?
And, can you describe that "look in the eye" a little better? I'm not sure what you mean, there.
Perhaps we can't understand what makes them evil but we can certainly understand that it exists and understand we must be aware of the signs.
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