The Trial

 Jan 2025

There has been an incident in school. Angel comes home angry and upset. She took someone's lanyard, a game they all seem to play, snapping off each other’s lanyards because the fasteners are fun to pull. But this time, the girl whose lanyard she’d taken came back with a couple of boys, took Angel’s bag, went through it, and stole her chewing gum.

Angel is outraged. “I know I took the lanyard, but it’s a different thing going through my bag and taking my gum!” she rants. She withdraws, angry with me too.

I lie on her bed, trying to stay close without pushing. We do horse quizzes, watch funny horse videos on YouTube. I think she appreciates me being there, even if it doesn’t shift her mood.

Day two, she’s saying she wants to kill the girl. 

Day three, we’re back in her room after school. I am asking questions from an ‘All About Me’ book, searching for a way in. She pulls up a chair, puts her feet on the bed where I am sitting and looks at me defiantly. Every answer comes with a raised eyebrow and snarky smile. 

Slowly, the story unravels. She tells me they surrounded her when they took her bag.
“That must have felt really scary,” I say. “That’s bullying.”

Eventually, she mouths that she wants to kill the girl and commit suicide. It’s a sucker punch but I stay steady, “That must feel awful.” I say gently. 

Now she’s said it out loud, I can tell she feels lighter. I feel bloody awful but realise that is part of the process, that I can absorb her volcano of feelings and love her no matter what the feelings or words. 

I gently add that I know there’s scary stuff going on right now, the idea of changing schools must feel huge and terrifying, and maybe that’s also impacting how she feels. She doesn’t say much but listens. I say perhaps she should stay home the next day. We agree to see how she feels in the morning.

That night I crawl into bed wrought out and exhausted. Hearing her say she wants to die is devastating, but I remind myself that the idea of changing schools is probably triggering much deeper feelings and this incident may be the hook she’s hanging them on. Maybe she even took the lanyard because she was already feeling bad, needing to create a situation that matched her inner turmoil.

I think of her being surrounded, of her bag being taken and how it must echo the powerlessness of her early years and the five moves she endured before coming to us at 22 months. But this is also 13. I am grateful for the brilliant book I read on raising teenage girls, a reminder that this is the age of big feelings, when everything feels life or death. And that this too shall pass.

Parenting an adoptee means holding all these layers at once. It can be exhausting, but it also forces you to grow, to expand your empathy, to stretch your capacity for understanding.

The next day Angel is humming in the kitchen and the huge dark cloud that had been hovering has shifted. She says she wants to go to school. I hesitate, thinking maybe she should stay home, that I only have a few more days before we visit the new school and I need to prepare her but I also trust that she knows herself. When she comes out of school that afternoon in an OK place, I realise sitting with her through the storm without trying to change it has helped her manage it. 

At home, I tell her we are booked to go and see the new school next week. She freezes, silent.  That night I say ‘I know it’s scary, just know it's only to look. If you don’t like it, you don't have to go’. She hides under the covers. I leave it a day, mention it again when a family friend is over. Angel doesn't say much, but I can see the terror is receding. By the night before our visit, I am able to mention it without her freezing. I have pulled it off by the skin of my teeth.

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Angel sits between me and my husband in the headteacher’s office. She glances at me for reassurance as he asks her questions but answers bravely. Soon we’re being shown around.

I watch her soften as we go from room to room. The art teacher is a potter, she could work with clay whenever she wants. The English teacher mentions a boy who transferred from her current school and a girl who loves horses. Could she meet them? “Yes, of course”.

She sits by a huge window in what would have been a reception room in the Arts and Craft House. When the other kids arrive, she shoos us away.  

When she comes out, she’s smiling.

“What did the boy say about coming here?” we ask.

“That he misses all the drama and his friends, but it’s a good school.”

“And the girl who rides?”

“She’s nice.”

The school day is shorter. There are fewer subjects, movement breaks, fidget toys, computers for every student, four sessions of PE, double art, drama, music, enrichment Fridays where they pick their own activities. For us, it’s a no-brainer. For Angel, though, it’s still huge, after everything she’s endured, the friendships she’s forged and as an adoptee, change is hard.

I don’t know what we’ll do if she refuses, but I know we have to give her space to choose, then fight like hell for the funding.

In the car, she’s quiet. But when we get an offer for a three-day trial, she doesn’t protest.

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The night before, I ask if she’s nervous.
“Na,” she laughs. “It’s only 13 kids. I’m used to 2500 at Kingsdale!”
And yet the next morning when I drop her off, she leans her whole body against me like she used to when she was little. My heart swells and aches all at the same time.

While I wait in the lobby to collect her, the head teacher tells me her day went well and that she made friends with Stella, who is also on trial. Angel and Stella burst through the doors beaming like they have been best buddies for years. 

Walking to the car, I ask

“So how was it?”

“It was amazing. I love it.”

“Wow.”

“Mum, I could hear everything. It was so much fun. I had to do tests, but I had a computer with headphones, it could even read the question to me!”

“Wow, so all that brain space you’ve been using up trying to hear can be used to actually learn some stuff.”

“Yep.”

“Wow, that’s going to open up a whole new world to you.’

“I know!’

She’s different, softer somehow, like something inside has unfurled. It takes me a minute to realise why: she isn’t stressed. Normally, after school she carries a certain toughness which seeps away as she is able to relax.

At bedtime she whispers, “Mum, I can’t lie, I’m really excited to go in tomorrow.” This is a sentence I have never heard associated with school! 

The rest of the trial goes well, even when Stella isn’t there on the last day. Angel says she likes it better with Stella, but “the boys are fun too.” She wishes she could go for a whole week, says she never wants to go back to her state school, then agonises over leaving her friends.

We talk about education, how this new school could give her the chance to actually learn, how the friends that matter will stay in her life, how most of the day is in lessons anyway and right now she’s wasting hours unable to follow them. She says she’ll go if Stella goes but I know I have her.

Now we just need to make it happen!