For years, the Brown family of Sister Wives has navigated strained relationships, but the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and Christine Brown’s subsequent choice to divorce Kody have deepened those divides among family members. In a shocking revelation during Season 18, the family says that a group text spiraled out of control, potentially causing an irreparable rift between Robyn’s children and the rest of the Brown clan. So, what exactly went down in that fateful group chat?
Logan started the group chat
The oldest sibling, Logan, started a group chat for the Brown family’s kids to arrange a sibling gift exchange for Christmas 2021. According to Pardon (in Season 18, Episode 2), one of the siblings suggested that they inform the parents about their plan.
Robyn gets involved
At this point, Robyn joined the chat and asked to do a video Zoom chat with everyone.
However, it was hard to arrange a video call with the 16 adult kids that could fit all of their schedules. According to Janelle, “They’re not opposed to it; they just want to have it scheduled.”
Robyn says she was pushing for the video chat “for the sake of the kids.” Once she got a lot of pushback, though, she says she got discouraged and gave up. She didn’t elaborate with any further details.
Christine claims that Robyn said at one point, “My kids don’t even remember who their siblings are,” referring to her younger children with Kody, Solomon (12), and Ari (8), who were 9 and 5 at the time that this happened.
Christine says that Hunter chimed in to say that one video call isn’t going to help out that situation. Things then escalated from there to the point where lots of hurt feelings from when Robyn was first introduced to the family came out.
Robyn and her kids versus the rest of the Brown family
Robyn says that the chat turned into a squabble between her kids and the other kids.
Dayton, Ari, Robyn, Kody, Breanna, Aurora, and Solomon Brown (via TLC)
Janelle says a lot of people responded by trying to deflect from the brewing conflict. According to Christine, Gwen tried to joke to lighten the mood, but it backfired.
On her Patreon account Mykelti further explained that there were rampant misunderstandings of each others intentions with not only their words, but also with iPhone thumbs up and heart tapbacks that you can use to instantly reply to someone’s comment. For instance, a “thumb’s up” can mean any number of things when you add it to someone’s text, and it can be interpreted in a negative way.
The situation spiraled until the gift exchange was over, and there was a deep rift between Robyn’s side of the family and everyone else. It’s Janelle’s opinion that many of the things that were said are “hard to come back from.”
Kody feels that Janelle and Christine’s children (he doesn’t even mention Meri’s child, Leon) have already chosen Janelle and Christine over Robyn, and so he just ignored all the group chat drama. “I have always wanted to have Christmas together,” he says.
Christine feels like Robyn jumped to conclusions too fast. Robyn is steadfast in her belief that this divide between her kids and everyone else has existed from the start, and this is just “one example” of her kids being left out of the larger Brown family group.
Robyn says her oldest three children, Dayton, Breanna, and Aurora, walked away from the heated conversation not wanting to be involved in the gift exchange. Janelle says her children were confused about what happened.
“My kids think it’s heartbreaking and stupid,” Robyn says through tears. “Because we don’t understand.”
“And here it is just another reaffirmation of all the messages we’re getting that we’re the outsiders and we’re on the other side,” she continues. “We’re not! We refuse to be. We don’t know what else to do.”
Robyn’s declaration that she and her kids are refusing to be outsiders is confusing because she states earlier that her kids were the ones who decided to bow out of the gift exchange.
After over a decade, however, Robyn is finally being open with the rest of the family and with the television audience that she has felt like she and her children have been outsiders since they joined the family in 2010.
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