Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 6, 1993 TAG: 9305060379
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY BELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Thirty years ago, she worked in child welfare services, moving up through the ranks to encounter abused, neglected or abandoned children of all ages and backgrounds.
Lately she has been traveling the world as a senior trainer for the National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoption, helping social workers, parents, counselors and others deal with children who have been separated from their families.
Zeigler was in Salem recently, talking to parents and child-care professionals from as far away as Tidewater about some techniques she has encountered to help kids bond with new families while hanging onto their own family heritage.
"Kids heal proportionate to the amount of forgiveness they feel," said Zeigler, who has become an expert witness at custody hearings because of her studies of children in foster care and adoptive children.
Zeigler said the most important thing foster and adoptive parents can do to help children who have been abandoned, abused or neglected is to accept the family of origin and allow children to know the details of their family history.
"The tendency of the system is to detach the child from the family of origin, sending kids the wrong signals," Zeigler said. Her theory is that children who see their birth parents as "bad" come to think of themselves as bad.
"Until this is dealt with, the child cannot attach to a new family. Add-on families do not replace the family of origin."
The system, Zeigler said, sends mixed signals to the children. "Children who come into foster care are traumatized by feelings of loss because of their attachment even to an abusive parent.
"Even as social workers, we tell them: `Don't cry. It will be all right.' What we are actually doing is denying them the opportunity to grieve."
Children who do not grieve appropriately often act out in socially unacceptable ways, she said.
Zeigler supports a child welfare system in which children stay with families they have bonded to, regardless of color. She said "the system" often makes the mistake of moving black children who have bonded to white foster parents in order to preserve the child's cultural heritage.
The key, she said, is to encourage white parents to accept the child's extended family, including issues of race, and to allow the child to be proud of his heritage.
"This is a country that looks at race head-on. We've really got to come to some new conclusions," she said.
"Don't hide the child's racial history from him. A dark-skinned child of mixed racial heritage should not be told he is white," she said.
Zeigler's formula for working with children who have been separated from their birth family is to understand fully what they have experienced and to allow them to talk about what they have experienced and to grieve.
Teen-agers who have been separated from their birth families "come unglued at a much higher rate" for a number of reasons, she said.
"This is about the time that they begin to question, `Who am I, and where did I come from?' They become afraid they will replicate their birth parents' history."
Part of Zeigler's career has been devoted to helping adoptive and foster parents predict some behaviors that will surface from the turmoil of the teen years so the new family is not disrupted to the point where they give up on the child.
"These kids have vulnerabilities. Avoidance is dangerous," she said.
To social workers, Zeigler says, "Whenever you are in a tough spot regarding the future of a child's life, ask yourself what you would do if this were your child."
Zeigler's appearance in Salem was sponsored by DePaul Family Services as a community service. Organizers said participants were divided equally into foster/adoptive parents, social workers and others who work with children.
by CNB