Sister Wives patriarch Kody Brown is admitting that his relationships with most of his grown children are strained.

“I think most of the relationships between me and my adult children are strained,” the dad of 18 said in the TLC series’ October 5 episode. “It’s an issue of trash talk and innuendo, and it has challenged loyalties and trust on all sides.”

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 her husband Tony Padron, their 4-year-old daughter Avalon, and 2-year-old twin sons Ace and Archer in July 2024.

Lamenting that she’d asked her dad and his sole remaining wife, Robyn Brown, to drive from Arizona to Utah before their departure, the 29-year-old told Christine, “It didn’t happen. It is what it is.”

While Mykelti had been one of the most supportive of her father—aside from his five kids with Robyn: Dayton, 25, Aurora, 23, Breanna, 21, Solomon, 13, and Ariella, 9—Christine revealed that even their close ties had begun to unravel.

Kody cited busy schedules as the reason they didn’t connect, but Christine explained, “Mykelti and Tony were just sad that they weren’t able to see Kody and Robyn and the kids before they moved. The whole thing’s just been sad. The relationship with them is just not what Mykelti hoped it would be.”

Three months after the cross-country move, Mykelti shared her perspective on the rift. “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,” she said during an October 2024 fan Q&A on @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.”

She also pushed back on Kody’s view that he shouldn’t need to beg his kids for reconciliation. “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,” she said. Referencing Kody’s claim that his former wives had metaphorically stabbed him in the back, she added, “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.”