Supporting kids who’ve experienced abuse: Lessons from a rescued child in Yunnan
The coal stove in the shelter common room had just kicked on when the social worker pushed the door open, 7-year-old Xiao Mi pressed tight to her side. It was mid-December in the mountains outside Lijiang, Yunnan, and her canvas shoes had gaps at the toes big enough to see her purple sock through. She clutched a broken plastic rabbit with one eye missing so tight her knuckles were white. I stepped forward to take her small bag of few belongings, and she flinched so hard she knocked over my half-full mug of hot tea. It spilled across the wooden table, soaking my sleeve, and she dropped to her knees immediately, shoulders hunched like she was waiting to be hit.
I’d been volunteering at the small shelter for six months before Xiao Mi arrived, working as a teacher for the eight kids staying there while their custody cases moved through court. I’d read all the short training pamphlets on caring for kids who’d experienced abuse, but nothing prepared me for that moment—kneeling there, I fumbled for what to say, the standard “it’s okay, you’re safe here” stuck in my throat. I could see she didn’t believe that anyway.
That first week, she didn’t speak a word. She’d only eat after every other kid finished dinner, slipping into the kitchen to scrape leftover rice into her bowl. If anyone raised their voice above a normal volume—even just another kid arguing over a skipping rope—she’d disappear and hide under the dorm bed for hours. I made every mistake a new caregiver makes at first. I tried to hug her when she cried. I kept repeating that no one would hurt her here. I asked gentle questions about what had happened to her, hoping she’d open up. All of it just made her pull further away.
One afternoon I was sitting by the stove peeling mandarins, the sweet, small ones local farmers sell by the bag at the village entrance. She was hovering in the doorway, watching me, not coming in. I didn’t say anything about her being there, didn’t call her over. I just split my peeled orange into two piles, pushed one pile onto a crumpled napkin, and left it on the edge of the bench next to me, then went back to peeling my own. Five minutes later, she crept over, grabbed the napkin, and ate the orange standing by the stove. She didn’t run away after. That’s when I started to get it.
All the generic advice I’d absorbed before missed the core of what these kids need. We’re told to be supportive and give comfort, but for a kid who’s only ever experienced kindness as a trick—nice words followed by a hit, promises of food that never come—big gestures feel dangerous. The first concrete change I made was announcing every single thing I was going to do before I did it, if it involved getting close to her. If I needed to reach past her to grab a book off the shelf, I’d say “I’m going to reach past you now, I won’t touch you, okay?” If I wanted to pat her back when she was sad, I’d say “I’d like to pat your back to comfort you, is that okay?” It sounds awkward at first, but it gave her control, which is the one thing she never had before. Within three weeks, she stopped flinching every time I moved near her.
A month later, I was changing her bed sheets and found a pile of crackers and hard candy stuffed between the mattress and the frame, some of them half-eaten and moldy. My first instinct was to throw all of it out and tell her that was gross, that we’d give her new snacks any time she wanted. Then I stopped. I remembered her neighbor’s official report said she often went two or three days without food when her mom was passed out. This wasn’t a bad habit—it was her way of keeping herself safe. I called her over, and I dumped all the crackers out on the table. We sorted the moldy ones into the trash together, and I gave her a small blue tin with a lock, two keys, one for her and one I kept in the common room drawer. I told her she could keep any snacks she wanted in there, no one would take them, and we always had more in the kitchen if she wanted more. She didn’t say anything, but that night I saw her tuck the key under her pillow. After two months, she stopped hiding extra crackers. She knew there would be food the next day.
Another thing that used to stress her out was all the well-meaning donors and volunteer groups that come through the shelter. They always want the kids to talk to cameras, to smile, to say thank you for the cameras. The first time a visitor asked her to tell her story for a fundraising video, she had a panic attack that night, and wet the bed. I made a small cardboard “I don’t want to talk right now” sign after that, and told all the kids they could carry it any time they didn’t want to interact with anyone. No one would push them. Xiao Mi carried it in her pocket for the first month, and got it out any time a stranger came near. It worked. People leave her alone, no one calls her rude for it.
Things aren’t fixed, not by a long shot. Last month, Xiao Mi’s dad came back from working in the city, says he’s changed, and he’s applied for custody. The court is doing assessments, it could be another three months before a decision. Xiao Mi’s started hiding crackers again, and some nights she sneaks out of her bed and sleeps on the floor outside my room. She still doesn’t talk much about what happened to her, and I don’t ask. But last week, we walked down to the village market to buy vegetables, and she reached for my hand on the way, without me asking. She held it all the way there, and squeezed it when a motorcycle drove past too fast.
It’s easy to think that rescuing a kid means fixing them, that once you get them out of a bad place everything gets better. But the biggest thing I learned from Xiao Mi is that rescue doesn’t happen in one big moment. It happens in peeling an orange, in giving her a locked tin for snacks, in asking before you touch her hand. It’s letting her be scared, and messy, and not okay, until she’s ready to be okay on her own. We don’t know what will happen with the custody case. Some days I worry. But for now, we have today, and we have the mandarins, and that’s enough.
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