What Supporting a Rescued Abused Child From Yunnan Taught Me About Helping Trauma Survivors As A Teacher
Last December, I was folding construction paper at the after-school program in our transition home for rescued children outside Dali, when I first saw Xiao Mi. She was seven, small for her age, and pressed all the way back against the cinder block wall behind the water dispenser, one hand clamped around the neck of a cracked plastic rabbit someone had pulled from a donation bin. The other kids were cutting snowflakes for the community center Christmas tree, laughing and tossing glitter across the table. Xiao Mi didn’t move. She didn’t even blink for what felt like a full minute, just watched us like she was waiting for something bad to happen.
She’d arrived three days earlier, after local child protection workers pulled her from a village an hour north. Her parents had been addicted to opiates, and for most of her life, she’d been locked in a back room of their house while they were out using. Neighbors brought her rice sometimes, but no one had checked on her regularly for years. When the case came through, the workers said she’d never spoken to another kid her age, never been outside the house alone.
My first instinct, like most new volunteers, was to fix the discomfort. I grabbed a pack of glitter glue and walked over, smiling, trying to get her to come sit with us. I held out my hand to her. She flinched so hard she knocked over a paper cup, and scrambled further back, pressing her face to the wall. I backed off, but I still kept trying: I left extra cookies on her plate, I asked her every morning if she wanted to color with me, I tried to hug her once when she cried after a nightmare. She stopped eating for almost two days, and wouldn’t come out of her room at all.
Auntie Li, the social worker who’s run the home for 18 years, pulled me aside for tea after dinner that night. She’s seen hundreds of kids like Xiao Mi come through our gates, and she cut right through my good intentions. You’re trying to pull her into your world before she’s ready, she said. She doesn’t know what your smile means, what your outstretched hand means. All she knows is that people moving fast and coming close means something bad is going to happen.
She told me the first rule I’ve never forgotten: always name what you’re doing before you do it. Even the smallest, most harmless movement. If you’re going to walk past her, say “I’m just walking past you to get to the door, okay.” If you’re reaching for a pen on the table next to her, say “I’m going to reach for my pen now, I won’t touch you.” It sounds silly, it feels unnatural at first, but it gives them warning. It takes away the surprise that makes their brain jump straight to fear.
I started doing that the next day. I moved my sorting chair to the corner near the water dispenser, so I was close but not in her space. I never started a conversation with her, never asked her to come do anything. Every time I moved, I said what I was doing. One afternoon, I fixed her cracked rabbit’s ear with packing tape, set it down on the floor a foot away from her, and just said “I fixed the rabbit. It’s yours if you want it.” Then I turned back to my work, didn’t wait for a reaction. That night, when I was cleaning up, the rabbit was gone.
A week later, she reached out and touched the old scar on my wrist while I was cutting paper. I didn’t jerk my hand away, didn’t make a big deal out of it, didn’t gush about how brave she was. I just said “That’s from when I fell off a bike when I was your age. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Then I kept cutting. That’s the second thing I learned: don’t pressure them to be open or “recovered” before they’re ready. If they do a small, brave thing, you don’t have to turn it into a big moment that puts them on the spot. Just accept it, quiet like.
Another thing Auntie Li taught me: let them choose every tiny thing you can. Do you want hot water or warm water in your cup? Do you want to sit on the wooden chair or the plastic one? Do you want to brush your teeth now or after we watch the cartoon? Most of these kids have never gotten to choose anything their whole lives. Even a tiny, trivial choice gives them back a little bit of control that was stolen from them. It doesn’t take extra time, it doesn’t cost anything, you just have to remember to ask.
When a new volunteer tried to cut Xiao Mi’s tangled hair back in March, she didn’t ask first. She just came up behind her with the scissors. Xiao Mi turned and threw her bowl of rice across the room, grains scattered everywhere on the concrete floor. The volunteer was shocked, said she was just trying to help, that the tangles were pulling Xiao Mi’s scalp. She thought we should discipline her for throwing things. We just cleaned up the rice, and I said to Xiao Mi “You didn’t want your hair cut. That’s okay. We don’t have to cut it today, or ever, if you don’t want to.” She stood there for a minute, then sat back down and ate another bowl of rice. She still hasn’t let anyone cut her hair, and that’s fine.
Now it’s May. She joins the other kids to pick wild strawberries in the hills behind the courtyard most afternoons. She still doesn’t talk much, mostly just nods or shakes her head to answer questions. She still flinches if someone comes up behind her without speaking. Some days, she goes right back to hiding behind the water dispenser for half the day, and we let her.
A lot of teachers and parents ask me what they should do if they have a kid like Xiao Mi in their classroom, or their extended family. They think they need special training, or big expensive therapy, or that they have to make everything better fast. But the things that have worked with Xiao Mi are all small, free, easy to do. You don’t have to be a professional to do them. You just have to slow down, respect their boundaries, and stop rushing them to heal.
Last week, Xiao Mi left a squished half-strawberry on my lesson plan book. It was warm from being in her pocket all morning. I put it in a little glass jar on my windowsill. Some days are better than others. There’s no big, neat happy ending yet, and that’s okay. Healing doesn’t have to fit on a progress report or a holiday card. It’s just a squished strawberry on a desk, one small step at a time.
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