What Fostering a Rescued Abused Child From Yunnan Taught Me About Parenting Traumatized Kids
I woke up at 2:17 a.m. last month to the soft crinkle of plastic down the hall. When I flipped on the kitchen light, Xiao Mi was on her knees by the pantry, shoving handfuls of dry long-grain rice into the pockets of her too-big denim jacket. Her cheeks were puffed full, eyes wide like the feral kitten that showed up on our porch last summer, cornered and ready to bite if I moved too fast. Grains of rice spilled out onto the linoleum, and for a second we both just stared at each other.
Xiao Mi is seven, from a remote mountain village in Yunnan. I’d been approved as a foster parent for six months when I got the call: her parents were both drug users who’d been detained, and neighbors had reported that the little girl was locked in a backyard shed for days at a time with no food or water when they left. When child protection services rescued her, no extended family wanted to take her in – most were too poor, some said she was “bad luck” from her parents’ choices. I’d always wanted to give an older kid a home, so I drove three hours to Kunming to pick her up. That was three months ago.
The first week she was here, she knocked every ceramic mug off the kitchen counter one by one, until they all shattered on the floor. I yelled without thinking, and she crawled into the space behind our couch and didn’t come out for almost six hours. That’s when I realized I had no idea what I was doing. All the parenting books I’d read talked about tantrums and screen time limits, nothing about a kid who’d spent most of her life learning that any mistake could get you locked in the dark.
I used to default to asking “why did you do that?” every time something off happened. It took me weeks to learn that question shuts traumatized kids down. They don’t have an answer that feels safe to give – most of the time, they don’t even know what they’re feeling, just that they’re scared. Now I just name the need out loud, first, before anything else. That night with the rice, I didn’t ask why she was taking it. I just leaned against the doorframe and said “You were worried you wouldn’t have anything to eat tomorrow, weren’t you?” She froze for a second, then nodded, rice still sticking to her lip. I didn’t lecture her about wasting food or being rude. I just said “There’s always food here, any time of day or night. I can heat you up that leftover sweet potato from dinner if you want. You can leave the extra rice in your pockets if it makes you feel better.” That’s it. No big speech.
That small shift changed everything. When I went to her village to sort out paperwork back in January, I saw the shed they kept her in. It was behind their run-down shack, made of old wood planks, with a big iron lock on the outside and no window. The social worker told me she was once locked in there for three days straight when her parents went into town, no food, no water. All the “bad” behaviors people talk about with kids like this are just survival tricks. Hiding food, breaking things, not talking – none of it is misbehavior. It’s what they learned to do to stay alive.
Another thing I do that takes almost no effort is write every single part of our day on a cheap whiteboard stuck to the fridge, the night before. 7 a.m. Breakfast, 7:40 walk to bus stop, 3:30 p.m. home, snack, 4:00 homework, 6:00 dinner, 8:00 bath, 8:30 bed. She gets to change one small thing every day – if we planned apples for snack and she wants oranges, that’s fine. If she doesn’t want to walk to the bus stop and wants to drive, that’s fine too. Kids who’ve been abused never got to choose anything for themselves, so even tiny choices make them feel in control. I used to love spontaneous weekend trips to the lake, but the first time I surprised her with that, she threw up from anxiety before we even got in the car. Now I write everything down, no surprises. It takes two minutes the night before, any caregiver can do it.
I also don’t force affection anymore. The first time she had a meltdown at the grocery store because someone bumped her cart, I tried to hug her to calm her down and she scratched my forearm so hard I had a purple bruise for two weeks. I was hurt at first, then I realized: for her, hugs from people who were supposed to take care of her usually came before or after something bad happened. Now when she’s upset, I just pull the old knit blanket she likes out of the hall closet, set it on the step by her room, and say “I’ll be in the living room folding laundry if you want me. You can stay here as long as you need.” Then I leave. That’s all. Last week, she held my hand for five full minutes while we walked to the bus stop. That’s the first time she’s ever initiated touch. I didn’t squeeze it tighter or make a big deal out of it. I just let her hold it, and that was enough.
It’s not all slow progress, either. Last week, a boy pushed her off the swing at recess, and she wet her pants. She didn’t tell anyone, just sat in wet clothes until the end of the school day. When we got home, I didn’t scold her or tell her she should have asked for help. I just got her clean pants, threw the old ones in the wash, and said “next time, you can go to your teacher any time, for any reason. No one will be mad.” She nodded, but I don’t know if it’ll sink in next time. Some days she still hides rice in her jacket pockets. Some days she won’t speak to me or my partner for 12 hours straight, just sits on the back porch and watches the chickens.
Last Sunday, we planted sunflower seeds in the backyard. She picked the packet out at the grocery store, carried it around in her pocket for three days before we did it. She dug every hole herself, dropped each seed in, covered it up, poured exactly one cup of water on each one, just like the packet said. When she was done, she turned to me and asked “Will they grow? Even if they were in a dark packet for a long time?” I said “Yeah. All they need is sun and water, and enough time. They’ll grow.” She didn’t say anything back, but she reached over and held my hand for a minute before she ran inside to get a glass of juice.
We don’t know what the future will look like. We’re still waiting on the adoption paperwork to go through, and there’s a chance a relative will change their mind and want her back. There are days I go to bed exhausted, wondering if I’m doing enough. But I don’t need a perfect ending right now. All I can do is keep updating that whiteboard every night, keep extra sweet potatoes in the fridge, and leave the door unlocked for when she’s ready to come a little closer. That’s enough, for now.
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