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The ADHD Affected Athlete

by Michael E. Stabeno

171 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-1069; ISBN 1-4120-3242-3; US$17.99, C$23.00, EUR14.95, £10.36

Keys for Coaching and Parenting ADHD Affected Athletes, with suggestions, tips and techniques for understanding, communicating with, coaching and parenting ADHD affected athletes.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

Considering today's high level of interest in ADHD, it is surprising there are no books specifically aimed at ADHD Affected Athletes, until now.

This book explains how ADHD affects athletes, coaches and parents. The author treats ADHD not as a liability to athletics, but as an asset that can be developed. He examines how good coaches can easily make the wrong assumption about ADHD athletes.

The author also examines which sports, positions and styles provide the ADHD Affected Athlete with the greatest opportunity to succeed as an athlete.

This book is full of examples and suggestions that will help anyone better understand the condition and how to help ADHD Affected Athletes reach their athletic potential.

"In a classic "catch 22" scenario, where would a baseball coach typically play someone who isn't "paying attention" or seems distracted? The coach will play that person where the least amount of action occurs. And in baseball (or softball) that is right field.

Yet, because nothing happens in right field the ADDer becomes even less interested in the game and the sport in general."

It also includes sections on the effect of ADHD medications on the athlete and a section for parents of ADHD Affected Athletes.

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About the Author

While Michael Stabeno has had several careers, this is his first book. An American, he attended Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada on a football scholarship and was also a founding member of that school's highly respected wrestling program. He graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.

A former United States Naval Officer, he served in a variety of billets including Operational Test Director for the Tomahawk Cruise Missile Weapon System.

After leaving active service, he enjoyed a career in Human Resource Management with several multi-national corporations or their subsidiaries. These included Lockheed, Sulzer (Swiss), Philips (Dutch), and Siemens (German). It was during this period that he became active coaching his son's youth teams and later with high school and university wrestlers. It was through the diagnosis of both of his sons (and later himself) that he became aware of ADHD and how it affects athletes at all levels.

Frustrated with the lack of information available on ADHD affected athletes, he wrote this book by drawing from his unique life experiences with athletics, military, human resources, and international business.

He and his wife Karen (a former member of the Canadian National Track team) live in Beaverton, Oregon. Both of their sons attend universities in Canada.

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Excerpts

Introduction:

"Why would a coach be interested in working with an ADHD affected athlete? The numbers indicate many already are and simply do not know it.

The percentage of the general population with ADHD is conservatively estimated at 6%, with three times as many men being diagnosed than women. Six percent of 280 million Americans is nearly seventeen million people. How many elite athletes would be found in a population of seventeen million?

So if you coach a soccer, softball, basketball, hockey or baseball team, the odds are good that at least one of your players has ADHD.

If you are lucky, you will have more.

To understand why I make that statement it is critical that you understand how the athlete is affected by this condition. And this is more than the athlete being distractible, impulsive and hyperactive. It is how today's American society reacts to the ADDer.

In the last twenty-five years life has become more difficult for the ADHD affected, particularly the ADHD affected athlete. I know this because I have ADHD and both my sons have ADHD.

During this period, American society has increasingly endorsed the adoption of group processes, consensus building, verbal communication, confrontation avoidance, conformity, neatness, and perfection.

But this endorsement censures ADHD's defining behaviors of distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity. And whether an organization, school or enterprise is a public or private entity it likely has a "zero tolerance" policy for anyone displaying what could be interpreted as aggressive, confrontational, argumentative, disrespectful, or "inappropriate" physical activity.

Unarguably, the words distractible, impulsive and hyperactive have negative connotations. Subsequently every discussion about ADHD automatically starts with the unquestioned assumption these three behaviors are wrong and must be prevented or eliminated.

But are they wrong or are they just mislabeled? What if synonyms with positive connotations are substituted for distractible, impulsive and hyperactive?

Someone who is easily distracted by what goes on around them can also be described as being aware of their surroundings. The opposite of being aware is being unaware.

Another word for impulsive is spontaneous. And the opposite of spontaneous is cautious.

Another word for hyperactive is energetic. The opposite of energetic is lethargic.

If you coach a sports team do you want players who are unaware, cautious and lethargic? Or would you want players to be aware, spontaneous and energetic?

As stated earlier, if you are lucky, you will have more than one ADDer on your team."

Using ADHD as a competitive advantage:

"ADHD is a lifelong condition driven primarily by the levels of certain neurotransmitters in specific parts of the brain. These levels significantly affect how ADDers perceive and respond to their immediate environment. Labeling these perceptions and responses as good or bad misses the essential point. ADHD exists and isn't going to magically "go away". Therefore, the best way for an ADHD affected athlete to become "successful" is to learn how to take advantage of the condition.

Anyone, ADDer or not, is more likely be successful by learning to use the gifts they do have rather than trying to develop gifts they don't have. For example, no matter how hard he worked at it, Michael Jordan was an average, minor league baseball player. He simply did not have the physical gifts to play MLB. But what were liabilities in the batters box turned into priceless assets on a basketball court.

Because ADHD isn't going to "go away", the primary objective for the parent or coach of an ADDer must be to encourage and support the athlete in finding and developing ways to take advantage of what ADHD gives to the athlete, rather than telling the athlete to stop being ADHD."

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Catalogue Information

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