How Trauma Shows Up In Kids’ Daily Behavior: Lessons From A Rescued Child In Rural Yunnan
I was brushing broken crayons into a cardboard box after school last October when the jar of white glue slipped off the edge of my desk and shattered on the concrete floor. Seven-year-old Xiao Mei, who’d been lingering by the door watching me, flinched hard, then crumpled into a ball with both hands clamped over the back of her head. She didn’t cry, didn’t move—just held that position, shoulders hunched up to her ears, like she was waiting for a blow.
That was three months after child protective services brought her to our village school’s boarding program, after they rescued her from her stepfather in a neighboring mountain township. Before that, she’d spent a year and a half locked out of the house most days, beaten when she begged for food, and left alone for days at a time when her stepfather went into the city to work. Most of what I knew before she arrived was that she didn’t talk, and she’d had no formal schooling. I’d been braced for a lot of things, but I hadn’t been braced for that frozen, flinching response to a broken jar of glue.
For the first two months, I misread almost everything about her. I thought she was just pathologically shy when she never asked for water even when her lips were cracked in the dry mountain winter. I thought she was sneaky when I found three moldy steamed buns tucked under the straw of her mattress during bed check. The other teachers grumbled that she was slow, that she’d never catch up to the other first graders, that I was wasting too much time on her when I had 28 other kids to teach. The village principal pulled me aside once and said she just needed to toughen up, that all kids get knocked around here, she shouldn’t get special treatment.
It wasn’t until that afternoon when I dropped my pencil while reading picture books, and bent to grab it fast from under the table, that she fell right out of her chair she flinched so hard. That’s when I connected all the small dots: she never turned her back to the door when she was sitting. She always left half her rice in the bowl, like she was afraid of finishing it and having no more. She never fought back when the older boys took her skipping rope, just stood and watched like she expected to have things taken from her. She wasn’t shy or slow or sneaky. She’d learned to expect harm at any second, from any direction.
We don’t have a child psychologist here, no fancy therapy programs, just a small school with a handful of volunteer teachers and a leaking roof. So I started making small changes, things anyone can do anywhere, that didn’t take any extra money or training. First, I started announcing every move I made when I was within a few feet of her. If I was walking behind her to hand out papers, I’d say “Xiao Mei, I’m coming up on your left side to give you your worksheet now, okay?” If I needed to reach past her for a book on the shelf, I’d say “I’m going to reach my arm over your shoulder to get that storybook, I’m not going to touch you.” I told all the other kids and teachers to do the same—no sneaking up to tickle, no grabbing her hand to pull her into a game, give her a heads up before you do anything near her.
For the food hoarding, I didn’t take away the buns she’d hidden, I didn’t scold her for making the mattress moldy. I just added a 10-minute snack break at 3 p.m. every day, when everyone got one roasted chestnut or a piece of hard candy, and I told Xiao Mei she could always take two extra to keep in the tin pencil box I gave her. After a month, she stopped hiding lunch buns. She knew there would be food later, no matter what.
I also started giving her two choices for every small thing, every day. Do you want to color with the red crayon or the blue one? Do you want to line up first or last for recess? Do you want me to correct your homework now or after you finish playing? Abuse takes away every bit of control you have over your own life, so giving back tiny bits of control, even over things that don’t matter, helps rebuild that sense of safety. It took almost two months for her to start choosing instead of just staring at her shoes, but when she first pointed to the blue crayon, that felt bigger than any big speech I could have given.
It’s been almost a year now. She still doesn’t talk much, but she said her first full sentence to me last month: “I want more porridge.” She holds my hand when we walk down to the village to get soap for the dorm, but she still flinches if I move too fast to wipe a smudge of chili off her cheek. The other kids have gotten used to announcing their movements around her now, and sometimes they remind each other if someone forgets. There are still bad days: when it rains for too long, she’ll hide in the storage closet during recess and won’t come out for an hour. We don’t pull her out, we just leave a jacket and a candy by the door and wait.
Most parents and teachers will never meet a child who’s been through what Xiao Mei has, but these lessons apply everywhere. When a kid freezes instead of answering when you raise your voice, that’s not defiance. When a kid hoards snacks at a birthday party, that’s not greed. More often than not, what we read as bad behavior is just a kid who’s learned to expect the worst. You don’t need a fancy degree to help. You just need to slow down, announce your moves, give small choices, and prove to them that the things they need will be there, even when they don’t beg for them.
Xiao Mei still has a long way to go, and I don’t know what her life will look like in 10 years. But last week she drew a picture of a cat sitting on a sun-warmed roof, and she wrote her name at the bottom, all by herself. That’s enough for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How Trauma Shows Up In Kids’ Daily Behavior: Lessons From A Rescued Child In Rural Yunnan