He argues that he can and will work on physical conditioning at home--on the treadmill, where he can easily track his progress and he has only himself to compete with, and he can work out using our weight machine and Wii Fit and I let him use our living room as an obstacle course if he wants to.
I think part of the reason for wanting to work on physical things in the privacy of his own home is that a public schooled friend told us that if kids found out he was weak he would be bullied, but he was only talking about if my son ever went back to the public school. Another friend, several years older, agreed that he would need "protection" from these bullies if he ever went back to school. All of the kids in my son's scout troop, except for my son, go to that public school and I think I can understand why my son might want to try to hide his mild disability for that reason. The potential bullying problem is what put me into helicopter mode. My daughter, as a child, could easily take care of herself and I was never a helicopter parent with her. She said she learned to be mean in preschool so that usually nobody bothered her, but if they did, she took care of it right away and they didn't bother her again, and she always had an army of friends.
