What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child In Yunnan: Practical Tips For Caregivers
The morning Xiao Mi arrived at the children’s home where I volunteer two days a week, I was folding clean jumpers on a wooden bench in the courtyard. The white social work van kicked up red dust along the dirt road, and when the door opened, she didn’t step out first. She pressed her whole body into the back of the social worker’s legs, one small hand clamped around the woman’s belt loop, so only the top of her matted black hair showed. When I stepped closer to say hello, she flinched so hard the social worker had to steady her. The scabs on her bare wrists peeked out below the too-big t-shirt she wore, and she didn’t make a sound.
We learned later she was 7, removed from her home in a remote mountain village two hours away. Her stepfather had abused her for more than a year, and her mom worked in a factory hundreds of miles away, coming home only once a year and never intervening. For the first 12 days, Xiao Mi didn’t speak a single word. She ate all her meals crouched in the corner of the dining hall, never looked anyone in the eye. I made the first mistake everyone makes: I brought her a mango lollipop I’d saved, knelt down next to her, and tried to put a hand on her shoulder. She was up and running into the locked storage closet before I even finished saying “you’re safe here.” We had to slide saltine crackers under the door and wait three hours for her to come out on her own.
That’s when I realized all the generic advice I’d read before was useless. “Be supportive” doesn’t tell you what to do when a child thinks any kind of touch is a threat. So we started small, with things that didn’t require anything from her. I started eating my lunch on the bench near the playground where she liked to sit and watch the other kids play, instead of going inside with the other volunteers. I didn’t talk to her. I just ate my rice, and sometimes I’d leave an extra orange on the bench next to me when I got up to leave. After 10 days, she ate the orange.
A week later, the house mom found three half-eaten steamed buns and two candy wrappers stuffed under Xiao Mi’s mattress when she changed the sheets. A lot of people would have thrown them out, scolded her for being dirty or greedy. But we’d already seen that every behavior she had was just her trying to feel safe, after years of never knowing when her next meal would come, or when things would be taken away from her. Instead of taking the food, we sewed her a small canvas bag, the size of a textbook, with a drawstring she could pull tight. We put it next to her pillow, and told her “you can keep up to three extra snacks or buns in here any time you want. Every Sunday we’ll look through it together and throw away anything that’s gone bad. No one will open it or take anything out unless you say it’s okay.” She didn’t say anything, but that night we saw her tuck her extra bun into the bag. She hasn’t hidden food in her mattress since.
When she started first grade at the local village school a month later, her teacher sent a note home saying she kept erasing her work until the paper tore, and she’d gotten through two workbooks in a month. I went to the stationery shop in town and bought her a notebook with thick, cardstock pages, the kind that don’t rip even if you erase ten times. I brought it to her after school, sat down next to her on the steps, and said “your teacher told me you don’t like your work to have messy marks. This paper is thick, so you can erase as many times as you want, no one will mind. If you run out, I’ll buy you another one.” I didn’t tell her to stop erasing, I just gave her the space to do what she needed to feel in control. After a month, she was only erasing once or twice a page, and she hasn’t torn a page since.
I think a lot of parents and teachers who encounter kids who’ve been harmed think they need special therapy certification or big, dramatic gestures to help. But most of the work is just small, boring, consistent adjustments to how you do everyday things. If a kid flinches when you move your hand, you just start announcing what you’re going to do before you do it: “I’m going to reach past you to get my water bottle, okay?” It’s not awkward, it just tells them what’s coming next, so they don’t have to be on constant alert for surprises. If they hoard food or small toys, don’t punish it – give them a small, designated space that’s just theirs, that no one will invade. That builds trust way faster than taking their things away and telling them they don’t need to hoard. And never force them to talk about what happened, or hug you, or be “happy” before they’re ready. Sitting quiet next to someone while you peel potatoes or fold laundry does more than any forced chat ever can.
It’s been eight months since Xiao Mi came to us. She still only says a handful of words a day, mostly just “yes” “no” and “thank you” when you give her something. She still flinches when a motorcycle backfires loud on the road outside – the social worker told us her stepfather used to ride his motorcycle right at her when he was angry, to scare her. Last week, we walked up the hill behind the home to pick wild strawberries, and when we got to the steep part, she slipped her hand into mine. She held it for almost two minutes, until we got to the flat part, then pulled it away. That’s the biggest win we’ve had so far.
We don’t know what will happen next. The court is still deciding if she’ll stay in the home long term, or if her mom will get custody after she finishes her required counseling. Some days she’s still quiet, some days she hides for an hour if someone raises their voice by accident. But the small things keep working. We don’t need a perfect ending to be doing it right.
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