Practical Lessons For Caregivers: What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child In Rural Yunnan
The congee was still steaming when Xiao Mei knocked the bowl off the edge of the table. I’d just set it down in front of her, turned to grab a jar of pickled mustard from the counter, and heard the clatter before I could turn back. I jumped forward to catch the spill before it hit her lap, and that’s when I saw it: she’d crumpled back in her chair, both arms thrown over her head, shoulders hunched up to her ears like she was waiting for a blow.
I’ve been volunteering as a teacher at this small shelter for at-risk kids outside of Dali, Yunnan for six months. Xiao Mei, 7, had arrived just a week earlier, pulled from a remote mountain village after a neighbor reported ongoing abuse from her stepfather. Her mother had left years before, and her grandparents were too old and poor to stop what was happening. When the child protection team brought her in, she didn’t speak a word to anyone, just clung to the tattered sleeve of the social worker who’d driven her down the mountain.
I’d read a handful of articles about caring for traumatized kids before I came, and most said to give them space if they don’t want to interact. So I did that. I set her cot up in the corner of the dorm, left extra snacks on her shelf, didn’t push her to join the other kids for games when she hid behind the storage shed. After a week, though, I noticed she’d chewed through the entire hem of her only jacket, and she’d hidden under her bed for four hours once when I knocked on the dorm door to call everyone for dinner. I knew I was doing something wrong.
Back to that morning with the congee. I froze halfway to the table. I’d been about to say “it’s okay, don’t worry” like I would to any other kid who knocked something over, but the words stuck in my throat. She wasn’t worried about the bowl. She was waiting for me to hit her. Instead of reaching for her, I stepped back, leaned my mop against the wall, and said, slow and quiet, “I’m just going to clean this up. I won’t yell. The bowl is fine, I can get another one.” I knelt down and wiped the congee off the concrete floor, refilled a new bowl, set it down a little further away from her than the first one, then went back to stirring the pot. She stood there the whole time, arms still half up, and when I turned back around she whispered “sorry” so quiet I almost missed it. That was the first words she’d spoken to anyone at the shelter.
That moment made me rethink every little thing I’d been doing. Over the last two months, we’ve figured out small, low-effort changes that make a huge difference, things any parent, teacher, or caregiver can do even if you don’t have specialized trauma training.
The first one is just to say what you’re doing before you do it, no sudden moves into someone’s space. I used to sneak up to leave a book on her desk, or reach across the table to pass her a pencil without saying anything. Now I always announce my movement: “I’m walking over to put your water bottle on the table next to you, okay?” “I’m going to reach past you to get the chalk, I won’t bump you.” At first, she just stared, but after a week, she stopped flinching every time I moved near her. It sounds silly, small, but for a kid who never knew when a hit was coming, knowing what’s going to happen next takes away a lot of the fear. This works in any classroom or home too—if you have a student or foster kid with a trauma history, just a 2-second heads-up before you enter their space makes all the difference.
The second thing is give only tiny, two-option choices, no big open questions. When I first asked her “what do you want to eat for snack?” she just stared at me for ten minutes and wouldn’t answer. All her life, every choice had been made for her, and big open questions felt overwhelming. Now I just ask “do you want an apple or a cracker?” “do you want to sit by the window or by the door for story time?” No more, no less. Two weeks after she arrived, she chose to go look at the shelter’s chickens over coloring, and that was the first time she initiated any activity on her own.
Third thing: don’t force connection to prove they’re “healing.” I’ve had other volunteers come through and try to hug her, tell her they love her, push her to play with the other kids, and every time she just runs and hides. She still won’t hold my hand when we walk up the hill to pick wild berries, but she’ll hold the hem of my jacket when we walk, and that’s enough. She still won’t sleep with her door closed, so we leave it cracked a foot open every night, that’s fine. You don’t need a big, dramatic turning point to be making progress. Progress is eating a full meal without looking over your shoulder every two minutes. Progress is not flinching when the kitchen door slams.
Last night, I found a lopsided drawing of a yellow chicken taped to the door of my small room. The shelter’s three scrawny chickens are her favorite thing right now; she sits and watches them peck at the yard for an hour most afternoons. We still don’t know what will happen to her long term. The child protection team is still tracking down a distant aunt who might be able to take her, but if that doesn’t work out, she’ll stay here with us, which is fine.
Some days she still hides under the bed if there’s a loud thunderstorm. Some days she doesn’t speak at all. But last week, she laughed when one of the chickens jumped up on the fence to steal a piece of corn. I hadn’t heard that from her before. It wasn’t a big, neat happy ending. It was just a small, quiet thing. And that’s more than enough for right now.
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