What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child In Yunnan: Practical Tips For Caregivers
The steam from the pork congee fogged my reading glasses as I reached across the wooden table, and Xiao Mi flinched so hard her chipped porcelain bowl slid halfway to the edge. It was her third day at our small children’s home outside Dali, Yunnan, and I still hadn’t heard her speak above a whisper. I pulled my hand back slowly, set the jar of pickled radish I’d been reaching for down between us, and went back to my own breakfast without saying anything. That was the first time I didn’t mess up a small interaction with her.
Xiao Mi was 7 when the local child protection team pulled her from her grandfather’s home in a village two hours away. Her parents had moved to a factory in Guangdong when she was a baby, sent a few hundred yuan a year for the first three years then stopped calling. Neighbors called the child protection hotline after seeing her locked out of the house most nights, beaten for dropping a bowl or asking for extra food. We got her a new pink jacket, new hair clips, a bed with a fluffy comforter, and for the first two weeks she just hid under it, only coming out when everyone else was asleep.
Like most new caregivers, I thought the answer was more love. I’d kneel by her bed and tell her she was safe now, I’d offer to braid her hair, I’d bring her extra mango sticky rice after dinner. Every time, she just curled tighter into a ball. I even cried to the home’s director once, saying I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. She told me to stop trying so hard.
A week later, I was sitting on the concrete steps outside the dorm peeling tangerines after lunch, killing time before afternoon class. I saw Xiao Mi hovering by the kitchen door, watching me. I didn’t wave, didn’t call her over. I just kept peeling, split the biggest tangerine into two halves, and pushed one half a foot away from me towards her direction. After a minute, she walked over, sat down on the step three feet away from me, and ate it. She didn’t run off after. She just sat there, picking at the pith on her fingers, while I finished my tangerine and watched the goats wander past the rice paddy down the road. That’s when it clicked.
First, you don’t have to push connection to build it. Most of us think if a kid has been hurt, we need to break down their walls right away. But for kids who’ve only ever had people hurt them when they got close, being left alone in shared space is way safer than forced conversation or touch. Now, when I’m with Xiao Mi, I don’t pressure her to talk or hug me. If she’s hanging around the classroom while I grade papers, I just keep grading. If she wants to sort the crayons, I let her sort, no comments. After two months of this, she started sitting next to me on the steps every afternoon after lunch, no words needed.
Second, announce every small movement and ask permission for every touch, even tiny ones. I used to think this was overkill until I brushed past her shoulder to grab a chalk eraser once, and she jumped so hard she knocked over my full water bottle, soaking all my lesson plans. She curled up on the floor after that, shaking, like she was waiting to be hit. Now, I say “I’m going to walk past you to get the trash, okay?” before I move. If I need to tuck her hair behind her ear, I say “Can I touch your hair to fix that?” even now, eight months in. It takes two extra seconds, and it’s stopped almost all her flinching. She knows what’s going to happen before it happens, and that’s enough to keep her from feeling trapped.
Third, let them control the small, silly things that don’t matter. The cook used to get annoyed that Xiao Mi rearranged all the mugs on the kitchen shelf every single morning after breakfast. They’d get put back, and the next day she’d do it again. The cook wanted to tell her to stop, that it was a waste of time. I asked her to let it go. It’s just mugs. No one gets hurt if they’re in a different order. Xiao Mi had never gotten to decide anything in her whole life before—what to eat, what to wear, when to go to bed. Let her decide where the mugs go. Now she keeps the extra hard candies I give her behind the third mug from the left, and that’s her secret spot. She knows no one will move it, no one will take it. That builds trust faster than any speech about being loved.
Last week, she walked up to me while I was sitting on the steps, pulled my hand open, and put a small purple wild violet she’d picked from the hill behind the home in my palm. She didn’t say anything, just turned and ran off to play with the other kids. She still doesn’t talk much. She still freezes sometimes if someone comes up behind her too fast. Her dad sent a text a month ago saying he might come get her next Spring Festival, and none of us know if that will actually happen, or what will happen if it does.
Rescuing a child isn’t a one-time act, the way it looks in news stories. Pulling them out of a bad home is just the first step. The rest is all the small, boring, unglamorous days of showing up, keeping your distance when they need it, announcing your steps, and letting them rearrange the mugs. We don’t know how this story will end, but right now, that’s enough.
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