A physical therapist ("Mary") once took me to the woodshed over my decision to let my son, Benjamin, make more of his own decisions. At age nine, Benj decided that he no longer wanted to interchangeably use his manual wheelchair, his walker, and his newly-acquired (and freedom-generating) power chair—he wanted to use only the power chair. Mary said I should have insisted that he use his walker and/or his manual wheelchair for a certain amount of time every day so he could get more "exercise." She added, "This would make him much healthier.

I replied, "You're probably right. And you would likely be healthier if you walked to work every day. It would be good for your heart and lungs, you'd probably lose some weight, and more. So why don't you? Because you don't want to, you want to get from point A to B in the best way possible, and a million other reasons. So why shouldn't my son be able to make the same kind of choices you make?" Silence from her end.

Badda-Bing, Badda-Boom. Can we use more common sense?