Should Kids Have A Bill Of Rights During A Divorce?
Author Max Sindell is not one to sit back and let life happen. Instead, as an 11-year-old of divorced parents, he informed them of the visitation schedule he wanted and the decisions he planned to participate in. Now, at age 22, Sindell is helping other children learn how to do the same with his book, “The Bright Side: Surviving Your Parents’ Divorce.”
“Divorce is such an unsettling situation, and the worst thing about a life-changing event is just being told it is going to happen rather than being given a warning or being allowed any input,” said Sindell, who also has a Web site, survivingyourparentsdivorce.com. “It makes you feel like you are just being thrown around as a kid. I think it’s really important, especially when your world is in such turmoil, to be given a voice and to be listened to.”
Sindell, whose parents divorced when he was six, has been through many divorce issues, including remarriage, traveling between homes, stepsiblings and listening to his parents argue about one another. “The purpose of “The Bright Side,” he said, “is to help children recognize their voice and know that, like him, they, too, can find good things in divorce. The book is really supposed to be a quick handbook for making the most out of divorce and making it so that it’s the least of your problems,” Sindell said.
Amongst the highlights is the Divorced Kids’ Bill of Rights, a feature that, Sindell said, will allow children to understand their power in their parents’ relationship issues. “One of my earliest frustrations was just feeling like I was out of the loop,” Sindell said. “All these huge changes were taking place and totally adjusting my life in every respect, but I wouldn’t hear about it until it was actually happening.”
“The third section of the Bill of Rights allows children to understand that they have a right to know what is going on.” As in each section of the rules, however, Sindell is careful to stress to children that their parents, too, have rights, and that there are some things better left unsaid. “But if they’re having a discussion about your schedule, you have the right to know and to make your voice heard,” Sindell says in the book.
Sindell’s father, Gerald Sindell, said his son has always made his voice clear when is comes to discussing his parents’ divorce. “As early as it was appropriate, I tried to let Max be the one who made a fair balance around time-with-parent issues which, until he was fully in charge, had been fairly contentious,” Gerald Sindell said. “In many ways, his book arose out of the power he was given to discover what worked best for him as he grew up.”
In his book, Sindell uses those life lessons to walk children through the downsides of divorce, and discuss with them how to handle them. “I’d honestly say that my parents’ divorce is one of the best things to ever happen to me in my entire life: That’s the good news,” Sindell says in the chapter titled “The Good News and the Bad News.” “On the other hand, divorce can make you wake up one morning realizing how much everything sucks,” he writes.
Sindell then goes on to discuss such topics as, “You Are Never Going to Have One Home Again” and “Your Parents Are Going to Fight.” But within each situation, Sindell counters with positives, including learning how to travel at a young age and having more independence. “Max doesn’t mince words,” said Kimberley Cameron, Sindell’s mother. “He says divorce is not easy, but he is a survivor and has much to say about ‘the bright side,’ that can appear.”
What appeared from his divorce shortcomings, Sindell said, was the stepparents he gained throughout the process. His mother remarried when he was eight, and his father once when he was13 and again when 16. “The best thing I think about stepparents is that, on one hand, you know they have to be authority figures because they are still parents,” Sindell said.
But they also don’t have to be parents all of the time. They can be friends and you can have a kind of relationship that can maybe be a lot more relaxed than the one you have with your parent.”
Sindell was also fortunate, he said, to gain three stepbrothers from his father’s first marriage to a woman he married before Sindell’s mother. “We still rely on each other for moral support,” Sindell said. “I was very lucky to always have that. I know that not all kids are so lucky.”
What’s more, one of the greatest lessons he has uncovered from divorce, Sindell said, is the importance of communication. “I know that sounds like a cliche thing to say,” Sindell said. “But so much of the frustration that comes with divorce, parental relationships or relationships in general, is from miscommunication or assumptions about communication. And it’s so important to just say what’s going on, to really make it clear, and have that back and forth communication between two people.”
Sindell is not ready to put an end to speakingjust yet. He is already at work on a book to help parents learn to communicate with their children. “That’s the one thing I think I have taken most from divorce “ the importance of honest and unbiased communication,” he said.
THE DIVORCED KIDS’ BILL OF RIGHTS
(Excerpt from The Bright Side: Surviving Your Parents’ Divorce)
One concept author Max Sindell created in an effort to empower kids was the Divorced Kids’ Bill of Rights. Read on to learn about the first five rights Sindell says kids should always require as a part of their parents’ divorce agreement:
I. The Right to Be Safe and Feel Safe
A child should feel safe and secure. If there ever is a time you don’t feel safe, tell your parents, and if you can’t tell them, tell a counselor or tell a friend. This is your most important right.
II. The Right to Awareness
Every child has a right to know what is going on. Your parents should not lie to you or hide the truth from you about anything to do with you. While some things should remain private between your parents until you are older, if they’re having a discussion about your schedule, you have the right to know and to make your voice heard.
III. The Right to Counseling
Divorce can make you feel like you don’t have a say and don’t make a difference, and that’s exactly where a counselor comes in. A counselor should be someone whom you can talk to privately, without your parents there, and who can help you with your situation.
School counselors are not the only people you can talk to. Adult friends of the family who are unbiased, or the parents of good friends of yours, are also good people to talk to.
IV. The Right to Be Heard
Sometimes, when your parents are trying to sort out what they think is best for you, they can forget to listen to the most important person: You! If you can’t get them to listen to you by yourself, it’s important to have someone, a counselor or a friend, talk for you.
V. The Right to Be Your Own Person
Before your parents were divorced, there was you, your mom, your dad, and the other people in your family. The same is true now. Your parents have to respect your right to feel the way you feel. In dealing with stepparents, or the people your parents are dating, your rights stand. You must tell both your parents and their friends when any boundaries are crossed. If those boundaries are crossed in a major way, and you don’t feel safe, tell a counselor.
For more on the Divorced Kids’ Bill of Rights, pick up a copy of Max Sindell’s book, “The Bright Side: Surviving Your Parents’ Divorce.”
