Lessons From Caring For A Rescued Abused Child In Yunnan: What All Caregivers Should Know
Last October, I was folding donated winter sweaters on a splintered wooden bench outside our small transitional home for kids in rural Yunnan. A bright pink one with a faded rabbit print sat on top, and seven-year-old Xiao Mei drifted over from where she’d been stacking rocks by the gate. She reached out a thin, grubby finger to touch the rabbit’s ear, and flinched back hard when I shifted my arm to move a pile of wool socks out of the way. I froze mid-movement, and she’d already vanished around the corner of the kitchen before I could even breathe.
That was three weeks after she’d arrived. Local child protection workers pulled her from her uncle’s home, where she’d been sent after her parents died in a construction accident in Guangzhou. No one knows how long the abuse went on, just that a neighbor called after hearing her screaming through the walls one night. When she first got here, all of us volunteers were determined to make her feel loved. We’d sit next to her on the bed and ask her questions, offer her extra candy, try to hug her when she looked sad. Every time, she’d go rigid as a board, her eyes would go blank, and sometimes she’d wet her pants. We thought we were doing everything right, but we were really just scaring her.
One of the older caregivers who’s worked with rescued kids here for 12 years pulled me aside after the sweater incident. She said most of us get it backwards: we think hurt kids need us to rush in and fix them, but they just need us to stop scaring them. That’s when we started making small changes, the kind any caregiver can do, even if you’re not working at a home like this.
First, we stopped forcing interaction. Instead of sitting down next to her and demanding she talk, we started doing what we called “quiet side-by-side.” If she was stacking rocks by the gate, I’d bring my mending of the kids’ torn uniforms and sit on the other end of the step. I wouldn’t say a word unless she spoke first. If she got up and moved, I just stayed put instead of following. We all started asking permission for any touch, even tiny ones. If I needed to help her button her too-big coat, I’d say out loud, “Is it okay if I touch your coat to button it?” If she shook her head, I’d step back and say, “No problem, you can do it yourself then.” That’s not something most of us think to do—we just pat a kid’s shoulder or adjust their hair without thinking—but for a kid who’s never had a say over who touches her body, that small question changes everything.
We also started giving her tiny choices every single day, things we usually just decide for kids. Instead of “it’s time for dinner,” it’s “do you want to eat now, or play with your rocks for 10 more minutes?” Instead of handing her the blue shirt, it’s “do you want the blue one or the red one today?” She never had any choice over anything before—what she ate, when she slept, if she got to leave the house. Small choices build back a sense that she’s in charge of her own life now, which is something no big speech about being safe can do.
A month after that sweater incident, I was out walking the yard on a drizzly afternoon and found her sitting by the gate watching the village goats clop past with their bells. I pulled two sweet potatoes out of the kitchen oven—we’d grown them in our own garden—and set one down on the step a foot away from her. Then I walked to the other side of the gate and ate mine, not looking at her. Twenty minutes later, when I’d finished and thrown my peel in the compost, I heard a mumble so quiet I almost missed it: “Thank you.” That was the first full sentence she spoke to anyone here.
She still has hard days. Once, a younger kid snuck into her room and took three of her favorite smooth rocks she’d hidden under her bed. She screamed so loud the chickens flew out of the yard, and threw a ceramic bowl at the kid. Before we learned better, we would’ve pulled her aside, yelled at her for hurting someone, and made her apologize right away. Instead, we walked all the other kids out to the yard, said “I’m not going to punish you. I’ll stay right here until you feel calm,” and stood by the door not looking at her. When she stopped screaming 15 minutes later, we helped her find her rocks, and asked if she wanted to talk about it. She didn’t, so that was the end of it. We didn’t force an apology that day, and a week later she said it on her own.
It’s been eight months now. Xiao Mei goes to the local village primary school, and she has one friend who also collects rocks. Last week, she let me hold her hand when we walked to the clinic for her flu shot. She still hides under the bed during thunderstorms—her uncle used to lock her outside when it stormed—and she still won’t speak more than a few words to most adult men. We don’t know what her future will look like, if she’ll ever be ready to live with a new family or if she’ll always need extra space. Some days I worry about her, but most days I just see a kid learning to be okay, one small step at a time.
For any caregiver out there who’s looking after a kid who’s been hurt, you don’t need fancy training or big gestures. You just need to remember: their pace is the right pace. Ask before you touch. Give them small choices. Sit quiet with them when they don’t want to talk. You don’t have to fix them in a month, or a year, or even five. Just showing up, steady and unhurried, is enough.
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