Sister Wives Detail Massive Drama Between All Their Children: 'It Just Was Insanity'

During the most recent season, viewers previously heard about how a family text chain meant to organize a Christmas gift exchange between Kody Brown 18 children blew up in their faces, amid ongoing accusations patriarch Kody favors wife Robyn and their kids together more than the rest.

"What had happened was I was being told that the kids hated me," said Robyn on Sunday's new hour, saying that she was told that by "a person" who she wouldn't name long before the text chain in question. "I was being told that the kids hate me and my kids," she added.

"I was trying really hard to get us on a video call for the sake of the little kids, because this experience of this gift exchange is like a really memorable experience for some of the kids," she continued. "And my little kids aren't remembering who their siblings are, they don't know their names, they don't remember whose name goes with what and when I started getting kickback I went, 'Why am I trying here?'"

Janelle claimed that during the text back and forth, Robyn then accused the kids of treating her "so badly," before the threw up her hands at the situation. Janelle then said Robyn's kids "started piling in," echoing their mom's sentiment that they'd been treated "so horribly" and saying they were "never going to want to have our own families because this was such a horrible experience."

"It just spiraled, it just was insanity," she added.

As the text exchange continued to go off the rails, Robyn said Kody's other children then "started mocking" and "dismissing" her own, making her kids "feel very ganged up on" and so bad they no longer felt "emotionally safe to be part of this gift exchange."

Though Christine said there wasn't "a division with Robyn and her kids" until this incident, she admitted that "some siblings get along better than others" and they've gone through "some hard things" in the past. That being said, she felt they had "tried very hard" to include both Robyn and her children in "everything" up until this point.

Robyn, however, called BS -- claiming she went to both Janelle and Christine in the past because their kids were "being hard on a child of mine." She said some of the other children were "telling them they didn't belong and weren't part of the family," something they've apparently felt for a very long time.

Meri could see some of Robyn's complaints, admitting that they all could have done a better job integrating their families.

"I think that some people felt like that this was forced on them, like they didn't have an opinion. We're just going to get married and we're just going to have this family, we're going to have these kids and and everybody just has to deal with it," she said.

Janelle agreed, saying they didn't necessarily "take the time to listen to our own children" as their plural marriage kept growing.

"We really hurried and put it together without taking everybody's temperature. They were being told to, you know, sit down and shut up and accept this family being merged in and I feel like maybe we should have taken some time," she added.

Of course, the divide in this family isn't just between the children, as Kody's wives all felt, especially in recent years, that he prioritized his relationship with Robyn over the rest of them. After Covid restrictions imposed by Kody fractured the family even more, One on One host Sukanya Krishnan wondered whether the women ever felt like they were bullying Kody's #1.

"No, I don't. And that's where it started to get really weird. It's almost like [Kody felt] 'I have this paragon of a wife,' and so if you had any kind of a disagreement or you had any kind of a different opinion, even if you expressed it respectfully, you weren't safe," said Janelle. "You were a bully. As a wife, I should be able to say to Kody, I have a problem here. I couldn't say anything against Robyn. It became off-limits to say anything about Robyn."

Kody was adamant he was "equitable with my time," accusing his kids with his other wives of making Robyn a scapegoat in their family feud. He felt that she was always getting "blamed for s--t that I did or that I didn't manage," adding that it got so bad, he "was getting the point where if you had a complaint about her I'd be like, 'Shut up, I will punch you in the mouth.' Kody also said he was "getting sick" of the other women's "complaints" because "it was really obvious to me she was doing nothing but her best to be compliant to what our family structure was."

Christine admitted some of her conversations with Robyn may have been a little "aggressive," adding that she doesn't trust her and "will not" have a relationship with her now that she's no longer married to Kody.

"I'm not going to be her friend because I don't believe her, but I'm not gonna blame her for everything falling apart," she added. "I think we probably all have something to do with that."

She also said she wasn't really willing to fix the dynamic between her, Robyn and Kody either, accusing them of making "outlandish" comments. While she's down to work things out with the kids, "always," she simply had no "desire" to put in the work with her ex and his remaining wife. "I don't want to right now, just to be honest and just to be real," she added.

For her part, Robyn broke down in tears as Krishnan referred to Meri as her ex-sister wives, telling the host to never refer to the other women as exes. "She's my sister wife, so is Janelle and so is Christine," she said, sobbing, before adding that she just didn't know "how to let this go."

Sister Wives airs Sundays on TLC.