What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child In Yunnan: Practical Tips For Caregivers
7 a.m. at the small care home I volunteer at outside Dali, Yunnan, I was rummaging through the kitchen drawer for a wooden spoon to stir congee, and came up empty. Five spoons, all gone. I checked the counter, the sink, the shelf where we store pots, and then remembered Xiao Mei had gone to her room five minutes earlier to get her hair tie. She’d been with us for just under two weeks.
I knocked soft on her door and pushed it open half way, the way we do for all the kids. She wasn’t there, so I walked over to straighten her sheet, and felt something lumpy under the mattress. I lifted the edge, and there they were: all five spoons, wrapped in the frayed blue scarf she’d worn the day she arrived.
Just then I heard her small footsteps behind me. I turned, and she froze. She hunched her shoulders, both hands flying up to cover the top of her head, her eyes squeezed shut. I’d done a 40-hour training on supporting traumatized kids before I came, but nothing prepared me for that. All the phrases I’d memorized vanished. I just set the one spoon I’d pulled out down on the nightstand, stepped back to lean against the wall, and said, “I just need one to stir breakfast. You can keep the rest. I’ll wait here while you put them back if you want.”
She didn’t move for almost four minutes. I didn’t look directly at her, just sipped the cold chrysanthemum tea I’d brought out with me. Finally she walked over, tucked the loose spoon I’d pulled out back under the mattress, then pulled one back out and handed it to me, her fingers barely brushing mine. That was our first real interaction.
Xiao Mei was 8 when local child protection services rescued her. Her mother left the village when she was 3, and her father abused her regularly for years, before a neighbor walking past heard her crying one night and called the hotline. The first month she was with us, she didn’t speak more than three words at a time. She wouldn’t accept any new clothes, just wore the stained gray t-shirt she’d arrived in. If anyone raised their voice even a little, even just calling another kid across the yard, she’d slip off to hide in the back of the storage closet behind the sacks of rice.
I made a lot of mistakes those first few weeks. I kept trying to get her to open up, offering her new hair clips and candy, asking her if she wanted to talk about what had happened. Our senior social worker, Auntie Li, pulled me aside one afternoon after I tried to force a hug on her when she was upset. She didn’t say anything dramatic, just pointed to the chipped mug she keeps on her desk and said, “When everything in your life has been unpredictable and you’ve never gotten to choose anything for yourself, the first thing you need isn’t love. It’s control. Small, tiny control over little things that matter to you.”
That’s when we started making small changes that anyone can copy, even if you’re a foster parent, a teacher with a vulnerable kid in your class, or a caregiver new to working with abused kids. First, we gave her full control over her own space. No one enters her room without knocking, no one moves her things, even when we change the bed sheets, we ask her to take out anything she has stored under the mattress and put it back herself. For a teacher, that can mean a dedicated corner of the classroom a kid can retreat to anytime without asking permission, or a locked drawer in their desk just for their things. No one touches that space but them.
Second, we always ask before we touch, no exceptions. I don’t pat her head to say good morning, I don’t grab her hand to cross the road without asking first. Even when we need to check her for a fever, I hold up the thermometer and say “I need to touch your forehead with this, is that okay?” and wait for her to nod before I move. It takes an extra two seconds, and it completely changed how she reacts to us.
Third, we never take away her safety objects, even if they seem odd. I wanted to throw out those old stained spoons and replace them with new ones, but Auntie Li told me to leave them be. Those spoons weren’t just spoons to Xiao Mei: her father beat her with a thick wooden stick, so hiding all the long wooden objects in her space was her way of making sure no one could hurt her there. As she feels safer, she’ll let go of them slowly. Three months in, she now leaves three spoons in the kitchen drawer every day. Only one still stays under her mattress at all times, and that’s fine.
We also give her tiny choices every single day. “Do you want congee or steamed bun for breakfast?” “Do you want to do your homework now or after you play for 20 minutes?” It doesn’t matter what she picks, just that she gets to pick. It’s low effort, it doesn’t add any extra work to your day, but it builds trust faster than any big speech or fancy exercise I know.
Last week, we walked to the village store to buy school supplies. Halfway down the dirt road, she slipped her hand into mine. I didn’t squeeze it tight, I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I just let her hold it, the way you hold any kid’s hand when you walk. We still have a long way to go. She still hides during thunderstorms, because the sound reminds her of her dad yelling when he was drunk. The court case for her permanent foster placement is still moving slow, so there’s a lot that’s still uncertain. Some days she goes a whole week without flinching when someone raises their voice, some days she runs back to the storage closet after a loud argument between two older kids. But some days, she laughs when the other kids chase each other around the yard, and she asks for an extra apple after dinner, and that’s enough for now.
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