What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child From Yunnan: Practical Tips For Caregivers
It’s 4:15 on a rainy Tuesday in Kunming, and I’m folding a stack of faded hand-me-down pajamas on the common room couch when I notice Xiao Man still pressed against the door frame. She’s been with us at the transitional care home for 48 hours, and she hasn’t moved more than a foot from that spot since she got here. When I bend down to grab a dropped sock near her scuffed rubber shoes, she flinches so hard her shoulder hits the door, and I freeze.
The social worker who dropped her off told us the basics: 7 years old, from a Yi village deep in the Ailao Mountains of Yunnan. Her mom left when she was 2, her stepfather beat her when he drank, locked her in the back shed for days at a time when he went to work on the tea plantations. A neighbor finally called the child protection hotline after hearing her crying through the wall for two days straight. She’d never been to school, never held a crayon, never had anyone give her a piece of candy just because.
The first day, all of us volunteers were so careful, so wanting to fix things. One girl brought her a strawberry lollipop, held it out right to her face and said “it’s okay, you can have this.” Xiao Man fell backwards onto the floor, started shaking so hard her teeth chattered, and wet her pants. I got it wrong too that first day— I tried sitting next to her and talking softly, and she just squeezed her eyes shut until her face turned red. The next day, I changed things.
I brought my grading and my folding to the common room, sat on the far end of the couch, and set a half-peeled tangerine on the coffee table halfway between me and the door. I didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything. I just did my work. By the end of the afternoon, the tangerine was gone. I didn’t comment on it. The next day, I left two small cookies there. That became our routine.
A lot of new caregivers I talk to think the first thing you do with an abused kid is shower them with love and affection to make up for what they lost. But what I’ve seen, over and over, is that big open displays of affection just scare them. Abuse takes away every bit of control a kid has over their own body and their own life. If you force touch, force eye contact, force them to respond to your kindness before they’re ready, you’re just taking more control away. The fix is so simple, it’s almost boring: just be present, leave a low-stakes offering, and let them come to you on their time. No pressure, no expectation of a thank you or a smile.
After two weeks, Xiao Man started sitting on the floor next to the coffee table instead of by the door. That’s when I noticed the rice under her mattress. When we changed the sheets for the first time, there was a crumpled plastic bag full of dry rice, half of it gone moldy from the Yunnan humidity. The new volunteer I was working with gasped and said “she stole rice from the kitchen! We have to talk to her about that, right?” I told her no. Xiao Man went days without food locked in that shed. Hoarding food isn’t a behavior to punish—it’s a survival habit. Instead of scolding her, we just cleaned out the old rice, didn’t mention it to her at all, and put a locked jar (she keeps the key) on the bottom shelf of her closet. We keep it full of crackers and dried persimmons, and she can take whatever she wants whenever she wants, no one asks questions. Three months later, she doesn’t hide rice anymore. She still keeps the jar full, though, and that’s fine.
The other small thing that made a bigger difference than anything else is giving tiny choices. Instead of saying “put your shoes on, we’re going out,” I say “do you want to wear your blue shoes or your black shoes?” Instead of “what do you want for dinner?” I say “do you want rice or noodles?” Open-ended questions are overwhelming for a kid who’s never gotten to choose anything for herself. Tiny, low-stakes choices give her practice being in control, and that builds trust way faster than any big speech.
Last month, we walked down to the village market to buy tofu for dinner. It was the first time she’d agreed to leave the home with me. When we crossed the dirt road, a motorcycle sped past really close, and she grabbed my hand. She held it for 10 seconds, until we got to the other side, then let go and stepped back. I didn’t squeeze her hand back too hard, didn’t say “oh I’m so proud of you!” I just kept walking, like it was the most normal thing in the world. That’s what she wanted, I think.
Xiao Man still flinches if I reach over her head to grab a book from the shelf above her. She still doesn’t talk more than two words at a time. We’re still waiting for a long-term care placement that’s willing to take her, still working on getting her ready to go to first grade in the fall. Some days it feels like we’re moving backwards. But the jar of crackers stays full, the low-stakes offerings still get left out when new kids come in, and the small choices keep coming. Rescuing a kid doesn’t mean you pull them out of a bad situation and then everything is fixed. It means showing up every day, doing the small boring things, and waiting. That’s all any of us can do, right now.
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