Did Dylan secretly hate his parents?

Going to the prom and visiting universities. Why work so hard to please his parents with an appearance of normalcy when the deception would soon become very apparent? What did he expect to gain by it? He has to have known they'd spend the rest of their lives wondering if those gestures were his having second thoughts or were a private laugh at their expense, so why do it? Sadism? Confusion?
I'm new to Columbine so am probably missing something.

as a bit of an answer to your initial question, dylan spoke pretty spitefully of his parents in the transcripts of the basement tapes (the ones we do have, at least). i think he blamed them for some of what was to come. i don't really know why honestly. his parents seemed to treat him very well. maybe there was a lack of communication and maybe he felt he couldn't really talk to them about personal things (like in the diversion papers; he seemed to be not so good in his journal but in the diversion report he acted like things were essentially fine. he seemed to be more of "telling people what they want to hear" than eric, at least in that report).

as for the appearance of normalcy thing, i don't think it was just dylan. eric had also made some pretty strange efforts only a few days leading up to the massacre, like the marine recruitment thing. tmk he even lied about his medication on it. he could've known that it would've made him get rejected, or he could've considered the medication irrelevant since he sort of had a habit of stopping it then taking it suddenly again. i think he was probably taking it though at the time.

it's different for everyone but the things they both said indicate that they could've still had a bit of hope for the future. either that, or they divorced themselves so much from the situation that it came almost as a duty. i think it's probably a mix of the two. the idea had gotten so casual to them, they probably considered it as a "oh yeah, we have to do that" sort of thing up until the week of. i think that's when it really hit them, at least for eric. dylan probably looked forward to it more than anything, actually.

i know that the day before the massacre (iirc), eric was in class writing in a notebook and a friend or classmate asked what he was doing and he responded casually with "just preparing for tomorrow", or something along those lines. to me, it seemed to come as a second nature to them. i think that also opens up an even larger discussion as to why so many shooters feel like it's "something they need to do", but that's sort of unrelated. it's all so strange and i don't think there is one right answer. it's in human nature to survive, and i think that was still there even to the day right before they enacted their rampage. it's all so strange and conflicting, but that's my best reasoning for it.

I hope I can find this article, if not I bet [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] has it somewhere!

It had a story about Dylan and his dad meeting with the Dean at CHS and how their dynamic felt really toxic. Dylan wanted to be in the meeting, but the Dean wanted to only speak to Dylan's dad. It is hard to say, a lot of teenagers start hating their parents, but not really "hate" them but want to assert their independence.

Here is some information about that

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disclonis wrote:

as a bit of an answer to your initial question, dylan spoke pretty spitefully of his parents in the transcripts of the basement tapes (the ones we do have, at least). i think he blamed them for some of what was to come. i don't really know why honestly. his parents seemed to treat him very well. maybe there was a lack of communication and maybe he felt he couldn't really talk to them about personal things (like in the diversion papers; he seemed to be not so good in his journal but in the diversion report he acted like things were essentially fine. he seemed to be more of "telling people what they want to hear" than eric, at least in that report).

as for the appearance of normalcy thing, i don't think it was just dylan. eric had also made some pretty strange efforts only a few days leading up to the massacre, like the marine recruitment thing. tmk he even lied about his medication on it. he could've known that it would've made him get rejected, or he could've considered the medication irrelevant since he sort of had a habit of stopping it then taking it suddenly again. i think he was probably taking it though at the time.

it's different for everyone but the things they both said indicate that they could've still had a bit of hope for the future. either that, or they divorced themselves so much from the situation that it came almost as a duty. i think it's probably a mix of the two. the idea had gotten so casual to them, they probably considered it as a "oh yeah, we have to do that" sort of thing up until the week of. i think that's when it really hit them, at least for eric. dylan probably looked forward to it more than anything, actually.

i know that the day before the massacre (iirc), eric was in class writing in a notebook and a friend or classmate asked what he was doing and he responded casually with "just preparing for tomorrow", or something along those lines. to me, it seemed to come as a second nature to them. i think that also opens up an even larger discussion as to why so many shooters feel like it's "something they need to do", but that's sort of unrelated. it's all so strange and i don't think there is one right answer. it's in human nature to survive, and i think that was still there even to the day right before they enacted their rampage. it's all so strange and conflicting, but that's my best reasoning for it.

Great post man!