How To Care For A Child Who’s Experienced Abuse: Lessons From Yunnan
I was folding donated winter sweaters on a pine shelf in our shelter’s common room last October when 7-year-old Xiao Mi brushed past my elbow and knocked my chipped stainless steel thermos off the edge. Hot tea seeped across the concrete floor, and before I could even grab a paper towel, she’d dropped to the floor, curled into a tight ball, and covered her head with both arms. Her shoulders didn’t even shake – she just held still, like she was waiting for something bad to land on her.
I’d been volunteering as a teacher at this small rural shelter for two years, and Xiao Mi had been with us for three months by then. She’d been rescued from her home in a nearby village, where her stepfather had regularly beaten her and locked her in a garden storage shed when her mother was working in the city. When child protection officers found her, she was underweight and couldn’t even speak in full sentences to strangers.
I almost knelt down to pull her into a hug that day – that’s what my first instinct told me to do, what most generic well-meaning advice suggests. But I stopped halfway, because I’d already learned that sudden movement and unsolicited touch makes her skin prickle. Instead, I stepped back a couple feet, wiped the small splash of tea off my wrist on my jeans, and said in a slow, quiet voice: “I’m fine. The thermos just tipped. I’m going to get a rag to wipe the floor, okay?” I didn’t look directly at her while I talked, and I walked slow to the utility closet, no sudden steps.
By the time I got back, she’d uncurled enough to sit on her heels, and she picked up the thermos lid to hand to me. That was the first small win I’d had with her that month, and it taught me something I’ve held onto ever since: most of what helps kids like Xiao Mi isn’t fancy therapy or big, grand gestures. It’s small, specific changes to how you talk and act every day, changes any caregiver can make.
After that day, I started noting the things that actually worked with Xiao Mi, instead of the things that sounded good on paper but never helped. The first change we made was cutting out the vague phrase “it’s okay.” We used to say it all the time, after every little thing she did that wasn’t “perfect” – when she spilled rice, when she got a math problem wrong, when she flinched away from a hug. But “it’s okay” doesn’t mean anything to a kid who’s never gotten to be okay before. It just feels like another empty phrase. Now we say exactly what’s true, specifically. If she knocks over a cup, we say “that fell, I can clean it up, no one is going to yell.” If she doesn’t want to sing in front of the other kids for the holiday program, we say “you can sit with me and watch if you want, that’s fine with me.” No vagueness, no unspoken pressure.
The second small change is giving her an out for every invitation or request. For the first two months, every time we asked her to do anything – join a game, go for a walk, try a new fruit – she’d just freeze and shake her head. She never had a choice about anything before, so any request felt like an order she could be punished for refusing. Now we always add an alternative. Instead of “come play jump rope with us,” we say “we’re playing jump rope out front, you can come join for a few minutes if you want, or you can stay here and color the new book we got.” Instead of “try this piece of mango,” we say “there’s mango on the table, you can cut a piece if you’re hungry, or you can have an apple instead.” It takes two extra seconds to say, and it made a huge difference. She started saying yes to things about a month after we started doing this.
The third thing we do is let her contribute small things, even if they’re not done perfectly. A lot of well-meaning people want to do everything for kids who’ve been through bad things – carry their bags, get their food, fix their pencils. But Xiao Mi got anxious when we did that. She’d hide extra crackers under her mattress for weeks, like she was sure we’d stop feeding her soon if she didn’t earn it. Now we let her fold all the small socks after laundry day, even if most of them are mismatched. We let her feed the stray cat that hangs around the gate every morning. She likes to wipe off the dinner table, so we let her do that, even if she leaves crumbs in the corner that we have to wipe up later. It gives her a small sense of control, and she doesn’t hide crackers anymore except for one or two, just in case.
Last month, one of the other kids at the shelter accidentally stepped on a drawing Xiao Mi had spent an hour working on of a rabbit. I was across the room, getting ready to step in before anything happened. But before I could move, the other kid said she was sorry and offered to get tape to fix it. Xiao Mi didn’t curl up. She just nodded, and they taped the drawing back together together.
It’s been six months since she was rescued. She still flinches if someone raises their voice too fast. She still won’t sleep with the door closed at night. We don’t know what her long-term placement will be yet, and there’s a lot that’s still uncertain. But she holds my hand for a minute now when we walk up the hill to get fresh water. She laughs when the cat chases a butterfly. That’s as good as it gets right now, and that’s enough. Most of healing isn’t the big dramatic moments people see in movies. It’s just showing up, every day, and doing the small, specific things that let a kid know they’re safe now.
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