THE LITTLE BOY WHO COULDN’T
What makes the olypmics' eight-gold wonder like
as a boy? His mum tells of the fight against those who
said he couldn't...

Deborah phelps'third baby and only son was larger than life from Day1-9 pounds,
6 ouncesand 23 inches long. That's a shade over 48 kg and 58cm.

As a little boy,said his mother, he asked 25 zillion questions,, always wanting to be
the centre of attention. If he wasn't zooming by his big wheel tricycle, he was swinging past on the monley bars.

Starting with preschool, teachers complained:Michael couldn't stay quiet at quiet time, Michael
wouldn't sit at circle at time, Michael didn't keep his hands to himself,Michael was giggling ang laughing and nudging children for attention.

As he entered public school,he displeyed "immature" behaviour, as his teacher called it. " In
kindergarden,Iwas told by his teacher'Michael can't sit still,Michael can't be quiet,Michael can't
be focus,"recalled mrs phelps who was a teacher 22 years. The family had recently moved and she felt Michael might be frustrated because the kindergarden curriclum he was getting in the
new district was similar to the pre-kindergarden curriclum in their old district.

"I said,maybe he's bored," Mrs phelps recalled saying to his teacher."Her comments to me-'Oh
he's not gifted.' I told her i didn't say that, and she didn't like that much. I was a teacher myself so I didn't challenge her. I just said: What are you going to do to help him?"

In the elementary grades at their suburban Baltimore school , Mrs phelps said, Michael excelled at thins he loved- gym and hands on lessons, such as science experiments. "He read on time,but didn't like to read,"she said."So I gave him Baltimore Sun sports pages, even if he just looked at the pictures and the captions."

She will never forget one teacher's comments:"This women said to me: your son will never be able to focus on anything."

His grades were Bs and Cs and a few Ds.
It was a tough period.

Mrs phelps and her husband, a state trooper, were in the process of getting divorced. She had just gone back to school to get the master's degree to become an administrater, she said, and at the same time she had to be a parent 24/7.

Michael grew crazy, but not evenly-his ears looked huge and when he ran, his arms swung below his knee's (He was on his way to being 1.93m tall with an arm span of 2.01m)Chidren bullied him, and when he hit one on the school bus, he was suspended from the bus for serveral weeks.

When he was fifth grade, during his annual check-up,Mrs phelps and the family physician, Dr Charles Wax, discussed whether Michael might have ADHD-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.By then the Phelpses were a swimming family.(Michael's older sister Whitney,15 was ranked first in the country in the 200m butterfly, though her career would be short cut bty a back injury.)

Dr Wax's children also swam, and he'd notice Michael at the Phelps sisters' swim meets. Said mrs phelps:''Michael used to run around like a crazy people mooching food off people.''

The doctor suggested sending assessment forms to his teachers. Their consensus:Can't sit srill, can't keep quiet, can't focus.

At nine, Michael was put ... to be continued