Do you bleed every month Mum?

Do you bleed every month?
I hesitated, and decided not to go into the precise details of the Mirena.
Yes, I said gaily, reminding myself that I am a MODERN OPEN parent, and wondering if possibly the Tribal Wives documentary was such a good idea after all. My son looked at me with horror. "It's sore!" "No, not really," I lie. "But men don't have to?" "No." He sighed with evident relief at his gender's good fortune. We watched for a few more minutes. The onscreen topic moved onto female circumcision. I pressed the fastforward button. "Is it kissing? Cos I am NOT watching that."
The documentary finished. "You've had your fun. Go to bed."
"That was not fun. It was educational. It was all about girls," he said grumpily. Hmm. Educational is clearly the opposite of fun, it's the horrible stuff Mum makes you do when you are sore and would rather play Pokemon. Must work further on this JOY OF LEARNING business.
In the morning, I announced to the boys that we were going to the Sky Tower. (We have an annual pass). They ran around screaming in that particular way that means a) they are happy b) they are going to be hard work. My enthusiasm flagged. But in the event, they were reasonably well-behaved, apart from World War Three nearly erupting in the cafe about sharing an ice-cream pot. What concerned me was my eldest, the one I'm part-time homeschooling: he was short-tempered and unenthusiastic, unable to cope with me touching him or his youngest brother wanting some strawberry ice-cream too. He'd been pretty awful before we left the house, too, claiming he couldn't put his new jeans on because they were going to hurt him later. Huh, I thought, typical ungrateful kid, this is supposed to be a treat.
On the plus side, I thought as he whinged at me about something else unimportant and out of my control, this is a reminder to me that when I am homeschooling and he is grumpy ungrateful and uninterested, it's not necessarily that the curriculum is wrong or the lesson was badly planned: it's just the way he is sometimes. I wallowed a little in self-pity for the fact that I was working my socks off for the educational and moral benefit of this grouchy young man.
Then I did what a GOOD HOME-SCHOOLING PARENT should do: I searched for opportunities to shake his mood and find educational, "teachable" moments. We all talked about the clouds and how they were bringing rain and occluding the sky. "Mum there is nothing beautiful in those clouds, they are just covering everything up." I noticed that the floor was made of granite and marble (or a synthetic imitation) and knelt down to point the links to our geology lessons. "Oh. Yeah." He looked up. "Can I buy one of those souvenir coins over there?" He knows I hate pestering. I try to think positively and don my INTEREST-LED LEARNING hat. "Hmm, maybe you could start a coin collection and then we could buy one of those for it next time we come? Would you like to start a coin collection?" "OK," he says unenthusiastically. Then he insists that somewhere in the Sky Tower there is a lift without a glass pane in the floor and that he will only travel down in one of those. I persuade him down with the promise that we will check with the personnel on ground level if he is right (top tip for raising an Aspie: do not confront an incorrect fixed idea yourself, find another adult to do it for you). When the ground staff tell him that all the lifts have glass floor panes, he insists that he has seen one and grumbles all the way back to the car. He's so interested in grumbling and dragging his feet that he gets shut in the Sky Tower by himself (the disabled entrance doors only open one way) and we have to call security to get him back. By this stage I am wondering if I actually WANT to be reunited with this horrible young man.
We get into the car and on the way home stop at the park, where he grumbles because I have chosen a park which will give him prickles in his bare feet. Then he complains about the car seat destroying his neck. I am about to give him a proper telling-off, the kind of "I am FED UP WITH YOUR ATTITUDE YOUNG MAN" yell that I keep for special occasions, when a thought occurs to me. He's been on his feet for hours and just ran laps in the park but - before I reduce him to tears with my special-occasion-explosion-telling-off, I will just check.
"How are your legs?"
"They're really sore."
"Have they been sore for long?"
"Yes."
"Do you know why I asked that?"
"Because I am angry."
We've never discussed the relationship between pain and mood before. We obviously need to now.
I'm struck by how awful and resistant he was to everything, simply everything. And I feel even more strongly that he mustn't be pushed into school beyond his ability to cope. Because that kind of mood is no way to make friends or keep them. (I also feel rather helpless in my desire to make learning FUN! and INTERACTIVE! and ENJOYABLE! when he's at home in this kind of pain, but that's a side issue).
But I am glad I haven't yelled at him, at least.

At home, to cheer myself up, I make a list of every educational topic we discussed whilst we were out. And to my surprise, there is quite a long list. Many he brought up himself. I intended to use it as a base for some topic-led lessons, but as I look I realise something more fundamental. That actually he's full of ideas, and interesting questions, and co-operative conversations, even on a bad day like today. There was enough going on there, even WITH the attitude-pain-thing, to satisfy any interest-led homeschooler.

But something else also occurs to me. One of the reasons I am shifting gear, from my all-out "you MUST get to school" approach, isn't that when he was in school in pain he wasn't learning, a bit, or coping, more or less. It was the terrible experience of the mornings, the screams of pain as I forced him down the steps, the fact that he just wasn't learning to get on with it, or respecting the fact that it would be better when he'd got into the car and could stay sitting from then on in, or putting up with it because I was Mum and telling him what to do. It was a battle I wasn't losing - he would comply, screaming - but I wasn't winning. He wasn't learning that he could do it, he was just relearning every day that doing it was terrible. I have always thought that if you are constantly having to "fight for your child" - as the folklore of Special Needs parenting has it - then you are in the wrong place. The wrong doctor, the wrong hospital, the wrong school. You need to find people you can work with WITHOUT a fight.
And the same is true of education I think. Educational = fun may be a way off. Realistically, if he's too sore for school, learning at home will be tough. I can't make learning through pain GREAT! COOL! AMAZING, MUM! CAN WE DO MORE? But I can try to find the places and ways that he can learn without resistance, without it becoming a fight. And if that means sitting on the sofa discussing my menstrual cycle whilst we watch documentaries about Maasai wives and cowdung, that is OK. As long as he is asking questions. (Even if they are consistently the most embarrassing personal ones). I'll take that as achievement in home education for now.