CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Q&A: Sister Wives' Kody Brown, The Necessary Conversation Podcast, In-Laws Rejecting Adopted Child

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Whitney answers two listener questions that explore complex family dynamics and different responses to dysfunction. The first question comes from someone navigating estrangement from in-laws who rejected their adopted teenager. The second is about what happens when siblings respond differently to the same dysfunctional family system. Whitney also discusses a moment from the show Special Forces where Kody Brown, a TV personality known from the show Sister Wives, takes accountability for his mistakes as a parent. Whitney also reacts to a recent post from Chad and Haley Kultgen from The Necessary Conversation podcast. Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles. Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. 00:00 Introduction and episode overview 01:40 Special Forces and Sister Wives analysis 08:28 The Necessary Conversation analysis 17:43 Caller question #1 25:07 Caller question #2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome back to the calling on podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. Today we have a Q&A episode that covers some really important themes around accountability, estrangement, and what it means to make a relationship work for you and your family. I'm also going to be talking about a clip that I saw from the show Special Forces that I believe is on ABC and Hulu with Cody Brown from sister wives talking about and the estrangement from several of his adult children and his mistakes as a parent. And then a clip of the siblings on the necessary conversation podcast, which you all send me all the time. And they have been on my show before. So if you go back in previous episodes and find the necessary conversation, you will find our episode where we're talking about their

political podcasts that they have with their parents who have very different political beliefs from theirs and they've been doing this show for a couple of years. It's very impressive that they still have it going when you hear about their relationship with their parents. If you want to skip ahead to the listener questions, the first one is from someone navigating a really complex family situation. They're estranged from their in-laws because the in-laws rejected their adopted teenager. And now their youngest daughter is hoping the family will reconcile so she can be closer to her cousins. And then for the other question, we have a two-part voicemail that so many of you will relate to. It's about what happens when siblings respond differently to the same family

system. We have a lot to get into today. So let's go ahead and dive it. I've never heard of this show before Special Forces. It's been on for a couple of years. And season four is out right now on ABC and you can watch it on Hulu. But basically they take like reality stars, celebrities, athletes and put them through legitimate special forces training and exercises and they are doing some really wild stuff. But in the midst of all of this, the agents that are there with them, which I think are actual like retired special forces people, are talking to them a little bit, you know, about their history and what they're trying to prove while they're there and anything that's on their mind that might be getting in their way. And there's this psychological component

to the show that they try to address. And I've never watched really the show Sister Wives. I've heard of it. It is about a family in Utah where there is one man, Cody with a K, and he has several wives and has gone on to have 18 children with his four wives. And as of late 2024, at least six of them have been described as not speaking. to him and all of those are adults. And so in this show, Cody sits down with the special forces trainers and they ask him, like, are you taking ownership? And Cody says, I really thought I was a good

dad and husband and I misunderstood that. I did it wrong in so many ways and I hated being blamed for it. It made me resistant to ownership. And I thought this was huge. And I want to point out that this is a man who had four wives and 18 children. I don't care who you are. You did not have time to give attention to all of those kids, right? And he grew up in this type of system where this is what he saw. This is how men were supposed to live and structure their lives. And he thought that's what was normal and expected of him. And that's the way that he created his life. And when it didn't work out or when his children were kind of reflecting back and being like, hey, you made some mistakes and I don't like how my life with you

went, I think he was very taken aback and startled by this. And all of us on the outside can be like, man, 18 kids, four wives. Like, what did you expect? You're not going to be able to be close to all those children and have a bond with them. Like it's just kind of legit. logistically impossible. And I think that they grew up all living basically on like a compound where there were multiple houses and he would like visit each one and kind of spend a certain amount of time there, spend the night there. And it seems like it was very, very difficult to keep that up. The special forces agent then goes on to say, the fault is on you, no one else. And I believe this man is of similar age or at least generation to Cody, the man that he's talking to.

And so I thought this was a really amazing thing to see another man holding another father accountable and saying, hey, you are the parent in this situation and you need to be accountable. You need to show up and take responsibility for the way that this played out with your children and maybe for some of the feelings that you have, even if you felt like you were a good dad and a good husband. It just didn't impact them in that way. And they then go on to say, you know, to ask him point blank, do you feel like you've taken proper responsibility? And Cody admits it.

And I think this is something that we really need to celebrate and acknowledge. knowledge that he says, I would like to repair all the relationships with my family, even my ex-wives, but it's not easy. I haven't been honest with myself and I haven't taken ownership of things and my failures. I am sorry that I have hurt or offended my children. And the guys are basically saying, like, get around this facade and stop protecting yourself. Be honest with yourself. And I think that, you know, I know that he's not saying this to his children and he's saying it on TV. And so maybe there's a part of his kids, if they were to see this. I don't know if they watch their dad on TV, kind of being like, oh, this is performative. He's not really

meaning this or saying it to us because, look, he's just doing it for this audience on TV to create more sympathy for himself or to make it look like he's trying. And we are like the evil kids that are not, acknowledging him or being there for him. And that's possible. And it's also possible that they feel that way because they grew up having their lives filmed on this TLC show for so many years. There's a ton of seasons of this show. I mean, I remember seeing this show years back, like, in commercials and stuff. And the children were quite young. So I think they spent a lot of their life being exposed and having to perform. And, I could see how they might interpret their father's behavior of him saying this, but only for

cameras on a reality TV show as disingenuous. Putting all that aside, I think that we need to celebrate and acknowledge seeing this type of discourse being shown on television, that we have a parent in front of us that is saying, I made mistakes, I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn't. I want to repair. It hasn't been easy. And I want to be honest with myself. I think that's what a lot of, I know that's what a lot of adults want from their parents because that's what they tell me that they want. And so if you're a parent listening to this, you know, I think even going and watching this episode on Special Forces, I think it's like, oh, season four episode seven at about 33 minutes in. And you can see, you know, how this man is talking and

what it sounds like to take this kind of accountability. And I would love to see this translate into actual conversations and repair with his children. Now I'm going to play for you a clip from the necessary conversation podcast. And just to give you a little backstory on this show, if you haven't seen it. Chad and Haley are two adults who started a podcast with their parents a couple of years ago. And I would describe Haley as being quite liberal and Chad as being way more liberal than his parents, you know, just based on the opinions that they share on the show. Their parents are Trump supporters to the degree that they like wear MAGA hats and buy all of his merch and are very defensive of Trump's policies. In fact, I have almost never seen them

in any clip or any episode really denounce something that's being done by the administration. It seems like it doesn't matter what is put in front of them. They agree with it. And so Chad and Haley have approached this as an opportunity to have these conversations publicly with their parents. I know that when they were on my show and I asked them like, what's your goal here? What are you hoping will happen? And how will you know when you've accomplished it? They said something along the lines of, you know, they still feel like they can save their mother and have these kind of conversations with her and that they see her ability to tolerate nuance and to have different thoughts. They don't see that as much in their father. And if you've

watched the show, I think you will agree with that that their father has certain very staunch opinions, but sometimes they also talk about their childhood. And that's what you're going to see in this clip. So let me play it for you. Last week on our simmer down, we had a controversial conversation about you and dad hitting us with belts and yelling at us when we were kids. No, you called it beating. We never, I wanted to get this right. We never beat you. Yeah, we spanked you. Okay. I'm going to send you something. I was going to have dad read this, but I don't, he failed. So I'm going to have you read it instead. I'm emailing it to you right now. There it is. There it is. I just got it.

Read it out loud. Last week we had a conversation in her simmer down about getting hit with the belt when we were kids. You guys denied it happened. I thought a lot about it and I just want to say something to you mom and dad. I think you both loved us very much. And when we were kids and you were doing what you thought was best, but you guys didn't have the best examples of parenting when we were kids. kids. When you were kids. Oh, when we were kids. But you guys didn't have the best examples of parenting when you were kids. I think you'd both admit that. So how could you possibly know how to be a good parent? On top of that, you were insanely young when you had us both 2021 and you did

all of this on your own. You had a lot stacked against you. And not to toot my own. horn, but I still think you still did a great job. Look at me and Haley, how we turned out. She's a business owner who has her own store covered by international news outlets, and she's a mom who would do anything for her kids, just like you both did. And she had her kids really young, too. She followed your example of how to make a family, and hers is incredible because of it. You both did a lot of really good things as parents, and I want you to know that. But I also think you made some mistakes because you didn't know any better and that's okay all parents do i love you and i thank you both for all of the amazing moments you gave us growing up that have made

us who we are today how do you feel i feel good i feel like that was nice i don't feel like we made any mistakes though i really really don't okay take a moment to say with that that video had such an impact on me because I've always said, I find it so curious as a parent myself that any parent could say, I don't feel like we made any mistakes. I think I made mistakes in the last 24 hours or things that I could have done better or said better. And when a parent says, I don't think we made any mistakes parenting. There's something going on there, quite a bit of a disconnect, denial, lack of self-awareness, inability to sit with this discomfort of being an imperfect parent.

Now I want you to think about that email that Chad, the co-host here, wrote. and what was in that email. Gosh, it was buckets of grace, understanding, empathy, nuance, the ability to recognize that there were both good moments and hard moments. There was forgiveness, understanding. I mean, it really was this perfect holding of those really complicated feelings. that you can have when you grow up with parents that you feel like loved you and did good things for you, but also were not great in a lot of ways. And you'll see here how they are arguing over the choice of words here, not talking about the impact or how it felt,

but the difference between spanking and beating. And if it's spanking, then it wasn't that bad. If it's beating, it was bad. And if Chad could just use the right word, then we would all kind of be on the same page. When in reality, you have your child in front of you saying, like, hey, you guys did this thing. Wasn't so great. Had a negative impact on me. I'm trying to share that with you. And instead, the parent is getting so caught up in like the semantics of the situation and what words were using. And then flat out saying, like, yeah, I think what you said to me was really nice. I agree with all the good parts, but we didn't make any mistakes. This type of response is what makes your children not want to come to you with their pain or with

their problems. Because in this moment, this mother is deciding what is worthy of her attention or recognition, and if she feels like she didn't make any mistakes, she didn't do anything wrong, and that she was justified in spanking and that it wasn't beating, then the conversation is over, and there is nothing left to discuss. So then there cannot be any room for discussion about impact feelings, what it's like for them now, what they wish was different. And because of that, there cannot be any more connection or closeness. You'll, you see here that, like, there's a wall between these children and their mother because they cannot connect over this. There's no ability to create more closeness or

compassion because the conversation has effectively been shut down. And something that I think is really admirable about Chad and Haley is that they do always seem to try to find the good in their parents. And that may not resonate with all of you. And I think they get thousands of comments from people every day that I see being like, just cut them off, just cut them off. But this is how they've chosen to handle their relationship. But it's not lost on me how painful these attempts that connection can be. And when you have an extremely emotionally literate and mature adult child who is really writing a textbook letter of, hey, mom, I love you, but I also want to talk about this. And that can't go any further than that. As the adult child, you know that you're stuck

there. Like, if that doesn't move you, if that doesn't get you to at least want to ask me some questions, then I don't have anything else left to say, right? So I would love to hear for many of you if you've felt like this before, like where you have gone to your parent with understanding, empathy, compassion, seeing both sides, all of this, still only to be met with denial, rejection and like a brick wall of it's in the past. That's your childhood. That's what happens. We're not going any further with it. And I thought that this was such a great example of that. Black Friday is here at IKEA and the clock is ticking on savings you won't want to miss. Join IKEA family for free today and unlock deals on everything from holiday must-haves to cozy

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And I might choose one of your questions for an upcoming show. The first question that I have was sent me in an email, so I'm going to read it to you, and then we will work through it together. This caller question says, we have been estranged from my in-laws off and on through the years, never very close. When we had our bio daughter, at that time, she was an only child. Our thoughts were, as long as they were good grandparents, we won't keep her from them. We adopted a teenager, and the in-laws did not accept her or welcome her into the family. We were not around them a lot, but when we were, we would have to hide this or deflect so she did not feel it or notice it.

It got to the point where we said enough and had to talk with them and nothing improved. So we went no contact. When this happened, the entire family is strange from us. His brothers will not talk to us anymore. Our bio daughter now wants my husband to get into a better place with his parents so that she can be closer to her cousins. So my husband has been trying and has a call with his mom and a mediator she chose next week. What is your opinion on us trying this for one daughter?

The oldest daughter does not know them, really. Doesn't ask about them. They have never liked me, so we just say that is the reason for the distance. She is extremely close to my very large family, and she still is close to her bio family, so she is not lacking in good family. Our youngest daughter just wants the connection with the cousins and thinks it will be easier if she's not estranged from the grandparents. On this side of the family, she has two cousins the same age as her. And there are seven cousins between the ages of 18 and 11, and she is

14. On my side, there are nine cousins between the ages of 32 and four, and I have a cousin her age. So on my side, there are two around her age and both are special needs. So it's two totally different cousin vibes on either family. Okay. The only thing, thing that's like first popping in my brain here is what is this going to do to the sibling relationship if one of your children is pursuing a relationship with cousins and grandparents where the other one is being exiled and is the payoff really that good you know how often is she going to be spending time with the cousins is it necessary for there to be a relationship with the grandparents in order to have a relationship with those cousins. And what is this going to do to

your adopted child who likely already has abandonment wounds, not feeling good enough, and is now being excluded? I'm not sure what those reasons are for the exclusion, but grandparents that would do that to an adopted child and not to their other grandchildren is a major red flag to me. And when I hear that, I think what could your biological daughter do that would get her rejected by them? Because they have no problem creating alliances or favoritism under certain conditions, right? So there's clearly something about your adopted child that makes them think she is unworthy of their acceptance. And that means when someone has that mindset towards a child, typically that they could do that for other reasons. You know, could there be a situation where your daughter's choices, whatever she decides to do in life, cause her to be rejected by them?

Because that's something that you've seen them do to your adopted daughter. There's also this idea that how are you going to manage this between the two siblings of like, oh, she has a relationship with the grandparents, but you don't? And why? And is that going to cause a rift between the. the two children that likely that's already a fragile and a relationship that requires some effort and some work because of the adoption and them being from, you know, maybe different backgrounds or having those types of feelings between one another because one of them is your biological child and one is not. Sometimes those things can come up in families where

siblings have different types of relationships to the family. I think you might need to work through a plan for some of that and even having conversations with the two of them. And I'm wondering, you know, if this is something to speak to your 12-year-olds about in a developmentally appropriate way. But I think a 12-year-olds can understand like, hey, this is what's going on with grandma and grandpa. And I'm curious if your 12 year old daughter would feel differently, if she knew the way that her sibling was being treated by the grandparents. It sounds very difficult to manage. Now, we can do this in the same way while also validating your daughter's desire to have a relationship with her cousins. And you can say,

things like, I know you want to be around your cousins. And it would be really nice to be able to hang out with them. And I understand why this is a loss and it hurts and it sucks. And like I wish that things could be different. And maybe even thinking about can we get creative ways for you to spend time with your cousins, you know, if your husband's siblings are open to that. It sounds like they have also pulled away or potentially become estranged because of this. But I think there really needs to be some thoughtful, like planning and understanding around how this is going to impact your family dynamic. And is this one of those things where you have to protect one child from further harm

who might be more vulnerable in this situation while disappointing your other child? It's very hard to tell, you know, where there is more upside here because I'm not sure what the benefit of those cousin relationships would fully be, how it would impact that child's life versus the others. But it's, I think for your adopted child, this could be very, very challenging. And the grandparents don't sound totally safe if they're willing to reject. a child who was adopted and only show love, you know, to the biological children. I hope that that answer is helpful and I hope that mediation went well if it has already happened since you sent me this question. Thank you. All right. Now I'm going to go ahead and play you our second caller question. Hi, Whitney. First off, I hope you're doing well. I've been

binging your content recently and it's been so very helpful. I'm calling today about how to navigate when a sibling goes no contact with your parents, but you still wish to maintain a relationship with them. For some quick context, my family unit growing up was quite dysfunctional. On the surface, me and my brother had a fantastic childhood. Our parents gave us everything, quote-unquote. Even to the point of basically spoiling us, they were always super present, very involved in our education, friendships, extracurriculars, everything, which seems really great. However, explosive arguments were also a very common occurrence in our home. Both of my parents, especially our dad, though, were reactive, very dispensive and void of accountability or apologies

whenever there was a conflict. The physical cycle in our home was a disagreement happens, there's a loud, explosive fight, lots of yelling, then afterwards there's avoidance or some sort of silent treatment, and then we all move on as if nothing happens. If we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist sort of thing, and the issue would never be addressed again. This now in adulthood has created some confusing relationships

between my brother and myself and our parents. Me and my brother have been doing a lot of inner work independently and therapy, and we've come to recognize how dysfunctional of our youth was. But both of us now being parents to babies under one years old and really committed to breaking some of these cycles, especially when it comes to conflict resolution and taking accountability. I personally have come to accept that certain behaviors I can't change within my parents and my husband and I, because he's been affected too, had done some work with establishing

boundaries and so far it's been staring decently for us. We have a good, I'd say, relationship with my parents. However, the relationship between my brother and sister-in-law, now their baby, and my parents, has been much more tumultuous. Recently, it kind of came to a head where my brother and sister-in-law made the decision to basically go no-contact until my parents can show any sort of willingness

to work on some of these issues with them, really works together, make amends, and take some sort of accountability. I currently feel very uncomfortable about this whole situation. I want to support my brother because I completely understand his perspective, and decision for him and his wife to go no contract at this time.

But I also feel confused with how to feel towards my parents and all this. I don't want to discuss this with them because I don't want to be put in the middle. But then I also can't act like our extended family isn't falling apart when I see them. It's like a big elephant in the room, basically. It's a hard thing to be in. So any insight into this situation would be so so appreciated. Thank you, Whitney, for all that you do, and I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much for that question.

I've been talking about this a lot in our groups at Calling Home, you know, the way that sibling relationships can play out so differently with parents. And this is something that I think we need to remember, that each child in the family brings out something different in the parents. And if we're talking about parents who are very emotionally immature or narcissistic have mental health issues, substance, whatever it is that they're going through, they're going to get triggered by different personalities, behavior, types of interactions with each child. And some children are going to be much easier for them to interact with or even to not show highly disruptive or abusive behavior with because of the way that they're

interacting? And so it sounds like you have decided to choose the path of like acceptance and setting boundaries and just engaging with your parents in this limited way, which might be a little bit more surface level or distant. And it's possible that your brother has not been able to do that. And And so he is engaging with your parents maybe in a way that is much more triggering for them. He might be having a lot more feelings, showing a lot more of discomfort or upset. And so there is a lot more pushback going on there. And as a result of that, you are being treated quite differently by your parents.

And so I think you have, it sounds like a great amount of empathy and understanding for the fact that you and your brother are reacting very differently to this. And that is normal. It's very uncommon, you know, for every sibling in a family system to see their parents in the same way, to make the same decisions and to react in the same way to them because you're all different people. You had very different childhoods and you have very different present lives. Now, of course, this is extremely sad and heartbreaking and awful that you now are in this situation with your family. And you're right that when you're with your parents, things might be calm and quote unquote normal, but you know what's actually going on. And you know that your brother is upset and distant and maybe not being treated in the right way or that he is upset. And I think that you can validate that for yourself and say, it would be really nice for this to not be my family situation. I would love to be able to have my brother and his wife and his child around and for my kid to grow up with their cousins and for us to have a relationship with

our parents. That would be really nice and ideal. I think that's what most people want. And that's not the reality of the family. Now, I don't know if bringing this up to your parents will have any value, will create more issues for you, or it will create some change. It sounds like this is something where they are likely approaching your brother in a very different way than they are approaching you, maybe because of the demands or requests or boundaries that he has put on them and the way that this relationship is impacting him in the present. And so I think you really have to think about, like, is it my place to step in here? Does it feel wrong for me to have a relationship with my parents when my brother isn't? Is this something that I want to talk to him about? And

is he feeling resentful or upset that I am having a relationship with my parents when he isn't? I think there's a lot of unanswered questions here about how this is impacting each of you and the feelings that you have around it. And I'm a big believer that siblings can have their own individual relationships outside of their relationship with the parents, but it takes a lot of effort and it's hard. And you both have to be willing to work at it and very much remove your parents from that equation and your parents also have to like stay out of the way. And so right now it might be that showing him support is just being like, I get it.

I understand why you're doing this. And I understand that our situations might be different and that we're both responding to this in our own unique ways and they both make sense within the context. and I want you to know as my brother that I love you and I understand you and I respect your decisions and I hope that you can do the same thing back for me, right? And understand that I'm making these decisions because of my own life and how this is going to impact me. And from there, maybe the two of you can sort of establish your own relationship.

And there might be a world where that means that you can both have a relationship with your parents as well, it might mean that you're never able to have that full like cohesive family unit. I also want to note that these things are not always permanent or forever and sometimes people need time and space to work things out. And, you know, if you both just had children recently, that can be a big trigger and like impetus for some of these feelings where both of you feel like you are protecting your child and trying to give them the best life, whether that's through having grandparents or keeping them safe from those grandparents. And so I would say starting with just like this foundational level of respect

and understanding for how each of you is responding to this is really, really necessary. And then from there, hopefully the two of you can kind of work to understand one another more, whether your parents come around or not. Thank you so much for calling in. I think that question is going to be really helpful to a lot of people. That is it for episode today. If there's one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it's this. You're allowed to make decisions that honor your lived experience, what you're going through,

and the family that you're building now. You don't have to sacrifice yourself to belong and you don't have to continue returning to a relationship that harms you just to keep the peace. And you don't have to convince siblings or extended family members to see what you see in order for your response to be valid and understandable. Every family system produces different reactions in different children and every adult has their own thresholds for conflict, their own attachment to the past and their own way of coping in the present. Your job isn't necessarily to make everyone agree, but to stay grounded in what's true for you and what you know that you need today. If today's episode brought

something up for you or you're navigating estrangement, low contact relationships, complicated family dynamics or questions about repairing with a parent, you are always welcome to join the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home. We have groups, classes, and ongoing support that can help you feel less alone and more resourced. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, or a comment, and I will see you next week. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist patient or other treatment relationship between you and Collingholm or Whitney Goodman.

For more information on this, please see Calling Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.