Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 77 Comments

Learn Icelandic

It’s the morning after last nights anxiety vortex and the calming late night dog walk. Our son slept reasonably well, the dog extremely well. Me – not so good. Head is still spinning about trying to solve the educational conundrum. How to give our son the best opportunity to find his wings and so importantly take his anxiety away.

My thoughts keep coming back to home schooling but ….. So many factors

  • Does this just increase the isolation
  • Friendships
  • How to unlock the potential
  • Keeping open University options
  • Type of education
  • Support services
  • Finances
  • The bureaucracy
  • What happens if something happens to me
  • On and on and on

This morning another option popped into my small brain. I remember a few years back watching a programme about a family living in a remote part of Iceland. May have been on a little Island as I think they were hoping to one day have a Bridge or tunnel built to connect them to the mainland. Post and supplies coming in each day by small boat. Many of the community coming out to welcome the boat as it pulls in each day.

The family had kids about the same age as our son. No schools for miles. They attended a virtual school. Rather than the school bus (or in this case school boat) they logged into a computer. Lessons then took place online with a teacher and a virtual classroom. Webcams allowed the teacher to see all the kids and importantly allowed the kids to see and interact with the other kids. It looked fantastic. Unfortunately our Icelandic is a little patchy!!!! But maybe this exists wider and might be another option to look at. Head starting to spin again so it’s time for another long dog walk. Thank you for reading these confused words. Take care. Góðan daginn

Maybe I might buy a Learn Icelandic book just in case.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 51 Comments

Old Photos

I was trying to find my birth certificate this morning. It’s funny that we are supposed to live in the joined up digital world and yet …… we still need to find a bit of paper which is many years old to try and sort stuff out with the government. Grrrr.

So countless shoe boxes later, still no birth certificate (haven’t seen it in years) but I did find some old parent photographs. Black and white photos just have a special quality to them. Feels like history in your hands. Our son can look at them for hours. Tonight he will sit and drink all the history in. The sadness is that I won’t be able to add much detail to them.

It’s still hard to imagine that my dad took part in the Second World War as a young man. I really wish that I had asked more questions. Now our son if he had the opportunity would have been fantastic, he would have probed every little detail from his grandad.

But we still have old photos as our little gateway into the past. The one below is his grandad with the platoon taken during the war in Iceland.