A Mother’s Reckoning

Sue Klebold was like any other parent, thinking that a parent would recognize if something was wrong with their child, that there would be signs. That a parent couldn’t possibly NOT know if there child was planning the unimaginable. Sue Klebold acknowledges that she was wrong. Looking back, she knows there were signs, but she pushed them off as normal phases of growing up.

Klebold talks about how she thought at first the her son Dylan, one of the shooters, was made to participate in the shootings. She later learned that he was a willing participant. She does feel that without Eric, the other shooter, Dylan would not have gone through with the plan. She makes this assumption based on the journal writings of both Eric and Dylan.

She also details the months prior to the shooting, what she remembers of Dylan during those months based on her own journal writings of that time. She shares journal passages and then talks about the time she is talking about and how she sees what she missed.

In “A Mother’s Reckoning” Klebold talks about her life before and after the Columbine massacre. She talks about the signs that she missed and the things she wishes for others to know. One thing that I never really thought about with all the school shootings, was the families of the killers. Many of these families are going through the same thing as the victims families, they too lost a family member.  Klebold didn’t have all the options that the families of the victims had as she was advised to not join a support group to talk about her feelings, these people may have to talk in court then if a legal proceeding arose.

Another thing that surprised me was how she talked about depression. When one is depressed, they don’t always see things as the way they are, it is rather how the person perceives the situation. Dylan, had friends, but he saw himself as an outsider. Klebold also feels that he may have felt that he was a burden to his parents- as they often wondered aloud how they would pay for his college expenses that would be coming up.

I found this book interesting to read as you get to hear another side of the story that you don’t often get to hear. She acknowledges that her son committed these crimes and she wonders what she could have possibly done to stop it. She realizes thinking back to the before seeing the things that she missed, and wonders if she would have stepped in at certain points, would everything had happened as it did.