While Kody Brown continues to be estranged from most of his adult children, two of his daughters, Ysabel and Maddie Brown, opened up on Sunday’s episode of Sister Wives about where things currently stand with their father, with Ysabel also giving fans some insight on the dynamic she has with her stepdad, David Woolley, who married Kody’s ex-wife Christine in 2023.   

As fans of ‘Sister Wives’ know, 22-year-old Ysabel is one of six children that Christine and Kody share. Despite previously expressing her concern about the quickness in which her mom and David’s relationship progressed, Ysabel reminded viewers on Sunday’s episode that she was mostly worried that David would try to step into “the role of dad” in their family– something she insisted neither she nor her siblings needed as, “we have a dad.”

“I thought that he might take up too much space,” Ysabel said, before revealing that David “never oversteps” and is “very respectful” of the fact that he is her mom’s husband and “not our dad.” 

Ysabel went on to share that she and her dad haven’t spent a lot of time together since Christine and Kody’s split in 2021; however, she gave David credit for making up for some her father’s shortcomings, without replacing him. She went on to tell viewers that doing this is “a hard thing to balance, especially if your dad isn’t very, like, prevalent in your life.” 

“My dad and I aren’t, like, close, close, close, close, close, close, but I mean, he’s still my dad and I love him,” she said. 

Ysabel also gave her mom a lot of credit for playing the role of both mom and dad in her life, admitting that she began to realize this more over the past few years. 

“She can be the dad and she can be the mom and she’s perfect at it,” Ysabel said. “And then David’s awesome too.” 

Sunday’s episode also featured commentary from Kody and ex-wife Janelle’s eldest daughter, Maddie, who became emotional earlier this season when opening up about devastated she is to not have her father in her life anymore. (That particular episode aired after Maddie shared last year that she stopped speaking to Kody because he “doesn’t have respect for boundaries” and failed to be a consistent presence in her children’s lives.) 

As Kody prepared to travel to North Carolina to apologize to Janelle for his actions following their split in 2022, Maddie surprisingly revealed to her mom that she believes “there could be forgiveness” between herself and Kody, though Janelle seemed less optimistic that Kody would actually take the steps necessary to make it happen. 

“It seems so far out there for him to have a relationship with you guys again,” she said, referring to Maddie and her four remaining siblings. (As fans of ‘Sister Wives’ know, Janelle and Kody’s son Garrison died by suicide in March 2024. Like many of his siblings, Garrison was estranged from Kody at the time of his death.) 

Despite Janelle’s comment, Maddie still insisted that she was “open to reconciliation and forgiveness and closure” with her father, but only under one condition. 

“ … if he ever wanted to be let back into our lives, there would need to be a pattern of consistency,” she said. 

As The Ashley previously told you, Kody and ex-wife Meri’s only child, Leon (who is transgender and uses they/them pronouns), recently gave some insight to their relationship– or lack thereof– with their father after Kody claimed in a podcast interview last month that he’d been “reaching out” to all of his children in an effort to make amends with them. 

“Let me be so f**king clear: I have not heard from that man since my brother killed himself,” Leon wrote on their Instagram Story last week. “Kody blatantly blew me off at Garrison’s funeral.” 

Leon went on to call Kody “a liar” and “a joke of a father.” 

Meanwhile, Kody and Christine’s daughter Mykelti claimed in an interview last month that Kody actually has reached out to her multiple times recently, but that she refuses to reconcile with him until he attempts to make up with her siblings too, referring to herself as “a package deal.” 

“ … You’ve got to treat my whole family nice; you’ve got to treat my kids nice,” Mykelti told the Pop Psych YouTube show. “You’ve got to talk to all of us. You can’t just have me. You have to have all of us … I want him to be nice to Ysabel. I want him to be nice to Savanah. I want him to talk to Truly and hang out with her and go visit her.”

New episodes of ‘Sister Wives’ air Sundays on TLC. 

RELATED STORY: Leon Brown Slams Their Father Kody Brown’s Claims That He’s Reaching Out to His Kids; Calls Kody a “Liar” & “Joke of a Father”

(Photos: TLC; Instagram)