Kody Brown would like to pass the blame.
As has been very well established at this point, the Sister Wives patriarch has next to no relationship with most of his children.
Kody himself doesn’t even deny this.
He just takes no responsibility for it.
“I think most of the relationships between me and my adult children are strained,” the dad of 18 acknowledged on the reality show’s October 5 episode. “It’s an issue of trash talk and innuendo, and it has challenged loyalties and trust on all sides.”
Trash talk and innuendo. We don’t exactly think Kody was referring to his own actions there.
The confession came as Mykelti Padron — one of Kody’s six kids with third wife Christine Brown — was preparing to move from Utah to North Carolina with husband Tony Padron and their three young kids.
“I know part of the reason they’re leaving is, [Mykelti] is just exhausted from trying so hard to get everybody back together again,” Christine said on the same episode, adding:
“Mykelti tried so hard to get the whole family back together again. She really wanted to.”
The Browns as a plural family fell apart back in November 2021 when Christine walked away from her spiritual union.
In the ensuing two years or so, Meri and Janelle did the same.
But Kody has always blamed others for what transpired, taking it out on his children by never acknowledging his own role and sort of punishing them for the decisions of their mothers.
Lamenting, for example, that she’d asked her dad and his sole remaining wife Robyn Brown to make the drive from Arizona to Utah before they left, Mykelti told her mom on Sunday night:
“It didn’t happen. It is what it is.”
In Christine’s view, Kody is citing competing busy schedules for the reason they didn’t connect. And this is just nonsense.
“Mykelti and Tony were just sad that they weren’t able to see Kody and Robyn and the kids before they moved,” she said on air. “The whole thing’s just been sad. The relationship with them is just not what Mykelti hoped it would be.”
A number of Kody’s older kids have come out and say they aren’t close to their father.
They sound open to reconciliation, but Kody is the parent. He has to make the first move.
“I think that if he took more accountability in any of his actions, his kids — maybe not all of them, but at least some of them — would reach out,” Mykelti noted during an October 2024 fan Q&A shared on the Instagram account @withoutacrystalball.
“Instead of blaming the children, or blaming how they feel about his relationship with his other wife or blaming the parents or blaming gossip or whatever, if he just said, ‘Look, I understand I did blank wrong. I’m sorry. Can we talk about it?’ I feel like that would go such a long way.”
As for Kody’s vitakeew that he shouldn’t need to beg the sons/daughters he shares with exes Meri Brown, Janelle Brown and Christine to repair their relationship, Mykelti simply isn’t having it.
“No matter what happens between myself and my kids, I would always sit outside that door, knock, apologize and ask and ask and ask and just continue to try to do whatever I could to make that relationship stronger,” the mom of three insisted back then.
“I feel like that’s what you do as a parent. Sometimes you just have to take the knife in the kidney, get over it, and apologize.”
Sister Wives airs Sundays at 10/9c on TLC.