What I Learned Caring For A Rescued Abused Child: Practical Tips For Caregivers
The first morning 7-year-old Xiao Mi arrived at my foster home in Dali, I found her wedged between the kitchen water heater and the counter, squeezing a dried mango I’d set out for her until the juice ran through her fingers onto her cotton socks. I didn’t pull her out or ask her to come sit at the table. I just set a paper towel by her feet, walked back to the living room, and kept folding laundry. Social workers had pulled her out of a mountain village outside Lijiang two days prior; her mother left when she was a toddler, and her grandfather, her sole guardian, had beaten her regularly and locked her in the goat shed for days at a time when he went to sell wild mushrooms in town. I’ve been doing foster care for vulnerable kids in Yunnan for four years, but I still don’t have a script for these first days.
At first, I made all the common mistakes. The first night, I sat down next to her on the couch and said, “You’re safe here, no one will hurt you ever again.” She just stared at the seam of my jeans, didn’t move an inch. I kept offering her snacks, asking if she wanted to watch cartoons, if she wanted to color, and she just shrank smaller into the corner. It took me a day to realize all the things I’d been told to do — reassure her, engage her, help her open up — were overwhelming her. She didn’t believe my words. She only believed what she could see and experience, small moment by small moment.
The first change I made was stopping direct offers entirely. I put a pack of crackers on the lowest shelf of the side table, left a bowl of washed strawberries on the kitchen counter where she could reach it when I was in the other room watering vegetables. For the first three days, she ate every bit of it when I wasn’t looking, and I never mentioned it. I also started narrating every small movement I made around her. If I reached up to open the top cabinet for a bowl, I said out loud, “I’m just getting a bowl, I’m reaching up now.” If I needed to walk past where she was sitting on the porch step, I said, “I’m just walking past to take the trash out.” It sounds silly, but within two weeks, she stopped flinching every time my arm went above my shoulder. That’s when I noticed how many small startles abused kids live through every day, when they can’t predict what you’re going to do next. Narrating takes the surprise away, and it takes almost no extra effort.
One afternoon I tripped over the dog’s rubber toy while carrying a stack of ceramic plates, and all of them shattered on the tile. Xiao Mi was coloring on the rug, and she immediately threw herself face down on the floor, pulled her arms over her head, and held her breath. In the past, I would have run over to pull her up, kept repeating that it was okay, that it wasn’t her fault. This time, I just stopped. I whispered that I was going to pick up the pieces, that no one had done anything wrong, and I started picking up the shards, talking quiet about how the dog leaves his toys everywhere all the time, this wasn’t even the first time I’d tripped over that same toy. I picked up everything, swept the floor, and went outside to water the garden. When I came back in 10 minutes later, she was back sitting on the rug coloring, just a little shaky. Crowding her when she was scared would have just confirmed what she already believed: that loud, messy things lead to getting hurt. Giving her space to breathe on her own terms taught her more than any reassurance could.
A month after she arrived, a new social worker came to check on her and asked if I’d gotten her to talk about what happened to her. I told her no, I hadn’t asked. I tried once, a soft question about what she used to do on the mountain with her grandpa, and she didn’t eat dinner that night, and hid back by the water heater for 12 hours. So I stopped asking. We just sit together on the porch in the evening, I shell peas for dinner, she sorts the bottle caps she collects from the village trash, and no one has to talk if they don’t want to. I keep an old coffee tin on the shelf for her bottle caps, and she adds to it when she feels like it. A lot of caregivers think you have to push kids to “process” their trauma to heal them, but that’s not true. Safety comes first, and safety means not having to talk about the hard things before you’re ready.
For the first three months, she wet the bed almost every night. I’ve had other foster parents tell me they make kids clean the sheets themselves to teach responsibility, but that’s the last thing a kid who got beaten for wetting the bed needs. I just kept extra waterproof sheets and pajamas stacked right next to her bed, so I could grab them quickly. When she woke up wet, I just said, “Let’s get you changed,” and we did it, no comments, no fuss, no apology required from her. After three months, it stopped. One night she woke up dry, and she pointed it out to me — that was the first full sentence she ever said to me.
It’s been eight months now. Last week, we walked to the village shop to buy soy sauce, and she reached up and slipped her hand into mine. I didn’t squeeze it too tight, just held it loose, like it was the most normal thing in the world. She still hides some days, when the village festival down the road gets too loud. She still won’t talk about her mom, or the goat shed. I don’t know what’s going to happen next — whether she’ll get adopted, whether she’ll stay with me long term, whether she’ll ever want to talk about what happened. Most days the work is just small, boring, unglamorous things: leaving snacks out, narrating your movements, not asking too many questions, changing the sheets without comment. You don’t get a big dramatic healing moment most of the time. You just get a hand slipped into yours, one day, when you weren’t even expecting it.
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