“My son is a completely different child: ‘His smile is now genuine’”

After more than two months at a treatment center in South Africa, the 15-year-old son of María Sif Ericsdóttir is, for the first time, taking responsibility for his life and looking to the future. He wants to become something. The boy has long struggled with a serious addiction problem, has often been out of control due to substance use, narrowly escaped death, and has received criminal sentences.

Frustrated with the lack of solutions in Iceland, Ericsdóttir made the painful decision to send her son abroad for costly rehabilitation on the other side of the world. She says she has no regrets — he has become a completely different person.

“Seeing them work out there — seeing how he’s changed — it’s incredible. I don’t even have strong enough words for it,” Ericsdóttir says in an interview with mbl.is, having just returned from visiting her son in South Africa.

“His smile is now genuine”

The transformation, she says, has been nothing short of astonishing.

“For the first time in his life, he’s taking responsibility for himself. His smile is genuine now. He has ADHD and has never been still since he could crawl — but during one of my visits, he sat with me on the sofa for four hours, just talking,” she recalls.

Her son now follows all the rules, wants to stay in treatment for a year, and dreams of returning home sober — to “show them in Blönduhlíð how to teach kids to stay clean,” she says, referring to the Icelandic rehabilitation center where he earlier completed a 12-week program.

The facility in South Africa, Healing Wings , near the city of Nelspruit, offers a nine- to twelve-month addiction recovery program. Another Icelandic teenager is currently there, and two have completed treatment in the past. Two more Icelandic mothers are preparing to fly out this week with their 14-year-old sons after raising funds to cover the cost, as the Icelandic government does not subsidize foreign treatment for minors.

Barriers at home

Before the trip, María faced stiff resistance from Icelandic child protection authorities, who initially refused to let her take her son abroad — claiming they didn’t know the facility.

“They said we could go, but we’d have to bring him back. Otherwise, we’d be arrested for abandoning him,” Ericsdóttir says.

She eventually took him anyway, after a senior official at the Prison and Probation Administration confirmed parents had the right to take such action if they believed it was in their child’s best interest. Only when the pair were already in transit — on a layover in Frankfurt — did she get the call that permission had been granted.

“We had already decided to do what we thought was best,” she says.

The difference abroad

Ericsdóttir describes Healing Wings as fundamentally different from Icelandic institutions: a structured, rural environment with limited outside contact.

“He’s out of circulation back home — but this is nothing like being sent to emergency housing or to Blönduhlíð and getting day passes to go buy candy at Hagkaup,” she says.

For the first three weeks, her son was not allowed any contact with the outside world — not even with her. Only brief updates came from his counselor.

“It was incredibly hard for him. He was angry and frustrated, but they wanted him to see that they were there for him — something he’s never experienced before.”

Now, Ericsdóttir and the boy’s father get a ten-minute video call each week, and she sees new progress every time.

“We’re both learning a lot from this.”

“Here it feels like storage for kids”

She contrasts the experience abroad with the Icelandic system, which she says too often serves as storage for troubled youth rather than real treatment.

“At home they just sit around in the common room, talk about drugs, and play on their phones while the staff sit in another room. What happens when they turn 18 — they just go to Hólmsheiði prison, another kind of storage?”

A systemic failure

Long-term treatment options for boys in Iceland have been unavailable since the closure of Lækjarbakki due to mold in 2023. The government plans to reopen a new facility at Gunnarsholt in early 2026, but Ericsdóttir believes too many lives are being lost while waiting.

“If I had waited for that, we’d still be in limbo — if he had even survived the wait,” she says.

She argues that, until Iceland can offer proper long-term treatment, the state should subsidize care abroad. One month at Healing Wings costs roughly 300,000 ISK — far less, she says, than the social and financial cost of leaving these kids untreated at home.

“It’s like taking your child to a heart specialist and finding out you’ve been sent to a dentist instead.”

Calls for accountability

Her story comes amid renewed criticism of Iceland’s child-protection and youth-treatment systems. The Ombudsman for Children has called for a formal investigation into the outcomes of children placed in state care, questioning whether the system genuinely helps them.

Education and Children’s Minister Guðmundur Ingi Kristinsson said this week that families who seek help abroad are acting within their rights and that the South African treatment model is now under review by his ministry.

For Ericsdóttir, the proof is already clear:

“My son is alive, sober, and smiling — a real smile this time.”