Dancing Queens' Colette Marotto Opens Up About Son's Special Needs: "A Fighter, and I Learn From Him"
Colette Marotto, a single mom and business owner, explains how ballroom dancing is her stress outlet.
It takes a lot of money and time to hit the dance floor and participate in the ballroom dance competition circuit, and Colette Marotto of Dancing Queens is balancing a busy home life as a single mom on top of it all.
Who Is Colette Marotto's Son?
The 48-year-old business owner from Scottsdale, Arizona recently shared more about her 17-year-old son, Kelvin, and his special needs during the show.
“Learning to accept Kelvin the way he is was very important,” Colette said. “That settled us into a relationship of only love.”
Colette shared her son has a “very rare” chromosomal disorder called Tatton-Brown-Rahman Syndrome, which accounts for her son’s great height.
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“Only 250 people in the world have been diagnosed with it,” she said on the show. “And it’s an overgrowth syndrome. So, it explains why he’s so tall.”
She added that everyone in the world who’s been diagnosed with the syndrome has also been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
“But he’s funny. And he’s laid-back. And he’s all these wonderful things,” Colette said. “Kelvin is the light of my life.”
Raising Kelvin means Colette's views on motherhood and even her own dreams have changed over the years. What might seem like a simple outing — going to Kelvin’s baseball game — was more challenging as Colette worked with him on the show to find the right pants for his uniform.
“He isn’t going to be the one that I get to babysit his child,” Colette said. “But those were my dreams. So, I had to let those all go a long time ago. To raise a child with special needs takes quite a bit of willingness to sacrifice any and every thought that you had about what it would be like to raise a child.”
Besides her son, Colette also lives with three dogs, six cats, and two tortoises. She owns a health care business that provides therapy services and caregiving for people born with developmental delays or any kind of disabilities.
She said ballroom dance has provided a kind of stress relief to her.
“It’s emotionally draining being the mother of a child with special needs. Being the sole owner of a business. Being a pet mom to all these animals,” Colette said. “But I can’t carry the weight of these worries and responsibilities with me everywhere I go. I have to have an outlet for it. If I didn’t have dance in my life, I think I’d have a lot of Xanax.”
Watch more of Colette’s journey at home and on the dance floor during Dancing Queens, airing on Bravo Tuesdays at 9/8c and the next day on Peacock.
