Olympic sized swimming therapy for ADHD?

August 11, 2008

Hi all I was watching the world's best swimmer Phelps

speaking today and thought he had a slight speech issue (lisp or some

flaccidity in the tongue or something) going on - so did some quick

research and didn't find anything about a speech issue -but of ADHD.

But regardless -since I just brought up how amazing swimming is as a

therapy -here's how it helped ! (as if I have to even tell

anyone -right?!! Anyone here from France?):

No one works like Phelps. But it is never to rise to the top -

- only to extend his dominance.

Out of the water, life has not been the same flurry of first-place

ribbons. A cheerful, high-energy cutup, Phelps was found to have

attention deficit hyperactive disorder in elementary school.

Homework, especially any kind of writing assignment, was completed

only with much parental supervision and frustration. Phelps's parents

divorced when he was 9. ''It was all just a very hard time in

's life,'' says his mother, Debbie Phelps, a former teacher of

the year in land and now an administrator in the Baltimore County

schools. She still recalls the transition from elementary to middle

school as wrenching for both her and her son, something they survived

only with a great deal of support from within the school. Phelps took

Ritalin for a couple of years, then demanded to come off it as he

finished sixth grade, telling his mother, ''I can do this on my

own.''

The water was his therapy. ''He is not a sit-still person,'' Debbie

Phelps says, ''but he can swim lap after lap.''

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You can hear him speaking here

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