Parental Guidance: With Authority or Upon Reflection?

I happened to read a pair of books, back-to-back, that provide a remarkable contrast to one another in their efforts to contribute to a conversation or the conversation about parenting. The first was a book by a father who wrote from a religious perspective. I bristled at first at the religious elements of the book, but decided to read the book anyway. It was short enough, there was no telling how strong a religious tone it would take and I was confident that I would get something out of the book. That was indeed the case. The complementary book of the two was Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning -- a distinguished, moving and powerful book that will have a lasting impact on me.

Klebold, if the name rings a bell more faintly than you feel it should, is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two young men who instigated the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999. Her book is a detailed account of her efforts to come to terms with her son's actions, and her absolute bewilderment at not knowing that her son was preparing to do what he did as his last days of high school counted down. It has been easy over the years for outsiders to accuse Klebold and her husband, suburban affluence, adolescent disillusionment and the absence of gun control as factors in the tragedy at Columbine and I would count myself among those who opted for those simplicities in interpreting (and shelving) its meaning. The reality of Columbine, so many other tragedies of that nature and, to be honest, everyone of our lives, is that there are secrets that we all keep and ought find a safe ear to share them with in order to connect with one another and be the people that we have the potential to be if those secrets remain tightly wrapped in pride.

A Mother's Reckoning, however, poses a cathartic and detailed counterargument. It is not, by any means an attempt to recast her role in the tragedy. She does a great deal of very open and wrenching soul-searching as she tries to come to terms with the moments that she wishes she could have back and her wishes that she could have influenced the course of events in anyway that she could, right down to the possibility of not marrying her husband. She loves her son, still does. She aches for the losses that she has contributed to are palpable and her efforts to sort through her relationships with her son and examination of the family she has had are brave, open efforts to shed light on something that is baffling in so many ways.

If I were to look at the entire range of my feelings, flaws and interactions with my son with the intensity and critical acuity that Klebold has looked at this moment of her life and everything that lead to it, I would be a much wiser, more informed and compassionate father. While not a parenting book in the sense that the other I book I read was, it will have a much deeper impact on me.

At this point, I am inclined to grant the other book anonymity. It is very much a by-the-numbers book about parenting. The author, a father of five, is quite confident in his approach to parenting and he boils it down to a set of points, each illustrated with a pithy chapter that features an amusing anecdote about something he did right or something another parent did that he disapproves of. The religious forays were relatively infrequent but did make me bristle at times with other aspects of his view of ideal parenting. On more than one occasion, there were suggestions that there were financial means to good parenting or the building of strong memories. On another occasion he excoriates a father he never met for golfing on the weekend and says that all fathers should quit golf. He steps back slightly from this position and he does eventually acknowledge that there are circumstances where golf is not something that fathers ought to quit and fess up that he does not know the father he skewers, but he continually favours making his points, and others, in simplistic terms.

As the religious orientation of the other parenting book emerged -- at first in passages quoted from the Bible that mix easily with adages from Garrison Keillor and other secular voices, but beyond to passages describing the Devil as a tangible figure who is celebrated at Halloween -- the shift from pithy and insightful toward fear-based and narrow-minded made me weary of the confident certitude that the author worked from. The checklist that the author -- as other authors of parenting do's and don't's -- created ultimately lacked a depth or flexibility that would come from the advice that is found in Klebold's book. Whether a book of 10, 40 or 100 "tips," such books leave substantial gaps and perhaps give a parent a sense of inadequacy because they did not do the 63rd item from a checklist or that they forgot much about a book that was actually quite forgettable to begin with.

While those checklists would find their way to the discard bins with some speed, Klebold's book, even as a mere talisman on my shelf, would be a reminder of the need for compassion, patience, sensitivity and intuitiveness that ought to guide a parent through each moment of this vocation.