10 minute read
FEATURED FAMILY
OUR BLENDED FAMILY
MEET THE KANIA/PALAZZOLO FAMILY
BY ANNE MARIE PALAZZOLO AND REBECCA KANIA
Our family is big, busy, silly, and most of all, ambitious. Whether its Wes signing up for a 50-mile trail race, “just to see if he could do it” or Anne Marie deciding to fulfill all of her dreams at once and open a school, a childcare center, and expand her enrichment class offerings simultaneously, we love a challenge.
The Kania/Palazzolo Family consists of Wes, Anne Marie, Rebecca, Tommy (13), Juniper (11), Noble (7), Lavender (4), and Shelby (2). We’re a blended family with lots of things that make us unique. Down syndrome, Sensory Processing Disorder, Primary Immune Deficiency, and PTSD are all challenges we deal with every day, but we’re also artists, teachers, future engineers, business owners, athletes, volunteers, friends, and so much more.
Starting with our youngest members, Lavender (4) and Shelby (2) are stepsisters as well as best friends. Despite losing her spot as “the baby” when our families combined, Lavender is very proud of her role as a big sister now, even wearing a bracelet that says “big sis" on it. They share a bunk bed and a room furnished with a dollhouse taller than either of them, plenty of baby Yodas, and a play kitchen Julia Child would envy. You can usually find them together, often making mud pies or building and smashing magna-tile towers.
Noble (7) is our future engineer. He loves to take things apart, figure out how they work, and make his own inventions. He is our family’s “fashion consultant”, always ready with an opinion on your outfit. He enjoys competing in Spartan obstacle course races (https/race.spartan. com/en/race/spartan-race-obstacles) like his bonus dad, Wes. Fenton boasts the opportunity for those with special needs to become Ninjas, too (https/tricountyninja.com/)
You can usually find Noble outside, reading Dog Man books, or building his latest Lego set.
Juniper (11) is our artist. She is an incredible painter and sketch artist and has a love for all animals, even bugs, reptiles, and her pet rats, Luna and Dawn. Juniper has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and while it caused incredible challenges for her early in life, she has made great strides in learning to regulate herself. Art helps her to decompress after a day full of too much stimulation. Obstacle course races and headstands help her get the “input” she needs on days when she’s feeling dysregulated. The hard work of obstacle courses like the Spartan course provide the kinds of input she needs to help her body feel good again. Juniper aspires to become the Art Director at AMPed Education someday and is already excellent at playing with and supporting her siblings.
Tommy (13) is kind, friendly, and generally enjoys the commotion of a house with 4 more kids in it now. He’s always up for a stuffed animal battle and will work relentlessly to get them all out of his room before his siblings throw them back in. Tommy loves a good game of frisbee with his cousins, riding his Rifton bike, cooking with Gramma, cheering on everyone around him, sharing a bowl of popcorn with Mom while watching Yo Gabba Gabba, SpongeBob, Mr. Tumble, or Handyman Hal, singing and dancing to his favorite songs from the shows, and playing games. One of Tommy’s favorite places is Elizabeth
Park in Trenton (Mom’s hometown). He loves to walk along the riverwalk and feed apples to the fish, play on the playground, watch the ponies and just hang out outside by the water. Tommy has Down syndrome as well as a primary immune deficiency and several food allergies, among other things, that create challenges. Rebecca and Anne Marie work together to ensure consistency between the households to help Tommy with transitions and challenges.
Rebecca stayed at home with Tommy for the first nine years of his life. Managing his many doctors, illnesses, therapies, activities, etc. was a full-time job. They lived in several states before settling in Michigan in late 2019 when Wes found a promising professional opportunity that returned them home. Rebecca has a huge family and life-long friends in SE Michigan who provide an amazing support system, and fun-filled weekends, holidays, and family vacations. She wants new parents to know that they don’t have to do this alone. Connecting with local organizations that provide resources for special needs families and not hesitating to get in touch with any service needed can help eliminate lonely feelings. Rebecca says, “You don’t have to do this alone, trust your gut, speak up, ask for what you need. If you don’t know what you need, that is perfectly normal, but tell someone. Think of your child’s education team as your partners, part of your support system. Work with them to get what your kiddo needs.”
Rebecca has been a fully remote, certified marketing strategy consultant for a firm out of DC for almost three years and recently joined the Executive Board of the Down Syndrome Guild of Southeast Michigan. In her downtime, Rebecca enjoys challenging workouts, taking their Golden Retriever, Max, on hikes, trying new foods, cooking, spending time with friends and family, kayaking, axe throwing, horseshoes, Bocce, snowmobiling, and more. “Divorce is always challenging for all parties, but especially for the children. My only concern is that my child is happy and as healthy as can be. I’m grateful that Tommy now has Anne Marie as a bonus mom. We have similar parenting styles and good communication” Rebecca shares.
I, Anne Marie, have wanted to be a teacher since I was five years old. As the sibling and daughter of people with disabilities, I saw so many deficits in the way their care and education were managed that I knew that a focus on special education, particularly emotional impairment, was my path. I have worked as a tutor for at-risk youth, a direct care worker in a group home, a private in-home special educator, a support coordinator for adults with developmental disabilities, an educational advocate and consultant, and most recently, the owner and special education director of our private microschool in Metro Detroit, AMPed Hybrid Academy. Volunteering has also been a big part of my life. I am a baby-wearing educator, focusing on children with special needs and also served as a volunteer breastfeeding counselor.
Wes, Dad and bonus-dad (or “Bad” as we call him!) enjoy football, Spartan obstacle course races, trail running, and most recently, competitive powerlifting. He’s also never met a doughnut he doesn’t like. In addition to working in the automotive industry, Wes is the co-owner and “Secretary of Boring but Important Things” at AMPed Education, the private education business founded by me, Anne Marie, his wife. Thanks to his education and experience in the business world, and his fluency in “corporate jargon”, he’s able to take on the “Boring but Important Things” required to run a quickly growing business while I focus on developing programs, and teaching. His dedication to being an active and supportive father to all five kids continues to impress me and those around him. Despite being an only child, he is somehow unfazed by the chaos five young children bring to our house.
AMPed Education grew out of Anne Marie’s dissatisfaction with how children with disabilities of all kinds were being educated. While some challenges were considered “severe enough” to warrant special education services and accommodations, so many students fell through the cracks, deciding that they were “just not that smart.” Starting with private tutoring for students on the brink of failing, she began seeing students in small groups in their homes or virtually during the pandemic. This concept seemed to work so well for many, that their parents never sent them back to school. Instead, Anne Marie stayed on as their private teacher, helping support their parents in homeschooling them. The AMPed Hybrid Academy brings this concept to more students than she could serve alone. Small, mixed-age cohorts learn together 3 days a week with a project based learning model. The other 2 days, they continue their education at home with an individually chosen set of curricula for each student. At a fraction of the cost of hiring a private teacher, our goal is that the academy can serve more students in need of a non-traditional learning environment. As someone living with PTSD, Anne Marie says she is even more aware of the value a small, supportive learning environment can have on students, especially those with “invisible disabilities”.
With the number of blended families continuing to grow, so too are the number of blended families involving children and adults with special needs. Anne Marie says, “In our family, planning meals, activities, trips, and even bedtime schedules, are influenced by the needs of all of our family members. Making sure there are ample places to sit down and take a break from noise and other stimuli when planning an activity helps support our members with SPD, Down syndrome, as well as PTSD.” These and other similarities in needs, despite being for different reasons, have helped everyone understand and connect as they combined their families.
Another thing that helped our family in the early days, was having our kids watch videos made by kids with Down syndrome to help them understand what it was. We also had open conversations about what their stepbrother’s abilities and disabilities were since they are not always obvious, especially to children. Our youngest members seemed to adjust the fastest with Lavender and Shelby both barely recalling a time without “everyone”. Finding activities that they could all enjoy has been pivotal in their bonding as well. Tommy and Noble share a love of SpongeBob and can often be found snuggled on the couch watching it, just don’t point it out or they will stop! All five kids share a love of bubbles and frequently hold “bubble dance parties” with our bubble machine on high and their favorite silly songs playing. We’ve found some local playgrounds that offer the challenge our young obstacle course runners want, and the accessibility our others need.
While Wes, Anne Marie, and Rebecca don’t pretend to have it all figured out, they know all of their children are happy and have their needs met, whatever those may look like. In Anne Marie’s & Wes’s house, being a team, assuring all five children that we are both parents with equal authority in the family, has helped the transition to be relatively smooth. The terms “bonus mom” and “bonus-dad” are definitely applicable in their house.
As Anne Marie once overheard Juniper explaining to Lavender, “It’s called a bonus-dad because it’s an awesome bonus that you get an extra person to love you!”
