What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child In Rural Yunnan: Caregiver Tips
7:30 a.m. at our small shelter outside Lijiang, I’m standing over a dented aluminum pot boiling sweet corn for breakfast, when I spot Xiao Mei’s scuffed sneakers peeking out from behind the brick water heater. She’d arrived 48 hours earlier, brought by child protection workers after a neighbor reported her father’s repeated abuse. Her mom had left two years before, and none of her extended relatives wanted to take in an 8-year-old who already “caused too much trouble.”
Three days in, I was changing the sheets on her bunk to get rid of mildew from the rainy season, and found three half-eaten steamed buns and a handful of hard candy crammed between the mattress and the frame. She’d been standing in the doorway watching, and when I turned around she dropped to her knees right there, mumbled “I was hungry. I won’t do it again, don’t hit me.” My throat tightened, but I didn’t pull her up or hug her— I knew that sudden touch would scare her worse. I just brushed the crumbs off my hands and said “Okay. Let’s get these out so the ants don’t bite you at night. I’ll get you a box you can keep under your bed, okay? No one will touch it except you.”
A week later, a group of volunteer trekkers stopped by to drop off donated clothes. One woman saw Xiao Mei hiding by the door, stepped forward and lifted her chin with her hand to get a photo. Before anyone could stop her, Xiao Mei froze, then wet her pants and ran straight for the pigpen at the back of the property, where we keep two pigs we raise for extra meat. The new social work volunteer with us wanted to run after her, talk her down, get her to come out right away. I stopped her. I grabbed a pair of dry sweatpants I’d sorted the day before, a bowl of hot soybean milk with a little sugar, and left both at the edge of the pigpen gate, then walked back inside. We didn’t talk about it for the rest of the morning. An hour later, Xiao Mei slipped in through the back door, changed her clothes, and drank the soybean milk at her table without anyone saying a word.
I’ve been working here for three years, and every time a new kid comes in, someone asks me what the trick is to helping kids who’ve been hurt like this. A lot of new caregivers come in ready to do big interventions, get the kid to open up about what happened, fix all the damage right away. But what Xiao Mei taught me all over again is that the first six months don’t need that. They need small, predictable, unexciting habits that build safety one day at a time.
For example, any time you’re going to touch a kid who’s been abused, even something as small as brushing a crumb off their cheek, you say what you’re going to do first, and ask permission. I still do that with Xiao Mei: “I’m going to fix the collar on your jacket, okay?” It takes two extra seconds, and it lets her decide if she’s okay with it, instead of surprising her with contact she didn’t ask for. That one small change makes a bigger difference than any big talk about feeling safe.
For the food hoarding, a lot of people will take the hidden food away and tell the kid there’s always more. But that doesn’t help, because the kid doesn’t believe you yet. When you’ve gone hungry and been hit for asking for food, “there’s always more” is just words. Instead, we just gave Xiao Mei a plastic pencil box with a little latch that locks, and told her it’s hers, whatever she puts in it stays there. No checks, no taking things away. Now she keeps three granola bars and a pack of gummy candy in it, and we never count. She hasn’t hidden food in her mattress in four months.
We also don’t change our daily schedule much. Breakfast at 7:30, lessons from 9 to 12, weeding the garden at 3, dinner at 6, bed at 9. If we have new people coming, we tell the kids three days in advance, and they can choose to stay in their room or join us. Xiao Mei didn’t speak for the first three months here. No one pushed her to. I’d just talk to her while we pulled weeds, about how the tomatoes are growing slower this year because of the rain, or how the stray cat behind the kitchen had new kittens. No pressure to answer. She started saying single words first—“corn” “cat” “rain”—then short sentences, after she felt sure no one was going to force her to perform or be grateful for being here.
It’s been 10 months now. Xiao Mei runs around with the other kids now, chases the chickens, shares her candy with the youngest kid at the shelter sometimes. She still flinches if someone walks too fast behind her, and some days she’ll wake up and refuse to come out of her room for breakfast. We’re still waiting for a foster family that’s willing to take her long-term, and there’s no guarantee that will work out anytime soon. No one here thinks we’ve “fixed” her. We’re just here, doing the small things every day: boiling corn for breakfast, leaving extra granola bars in her box, announcing when we’re going to touch her jacket. That’s all any of us can do, really. Some days, that’s enough.
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