“I know firsthand the devastating impact that can come when warning signs are missed.”
Kelly Stafford is opening up about some of the behavioral issues she’s been dealing with from one of her four daughters.
Kelly, who is married to NFL quarterback Matthew Stafford, was recording an episode of her podcast, The Morning After, when she shared that she has “been very, very much struggling with” one of her daughters.
Kelly, 36, and Matthew share 8-year-old twins Sawyer and Chandler, 7-year-old Hunter, and 5-year-old Tyler.
According to Kelly, one of her daughters “has become a little girl that I don't recognize right now.”
The mom revealed that while she knows kids often show the “worst parts of themselves” while in the safety of their own home, her daughter’s behavioral issues have been seeping into her social life as well, revealing that she’s been “disrespecting coaches and not listening, giving attitude, and walking away while they’re talking to her.”
She has also been bullying her sisters. “Tyler looks at her and said, ‘Wow, you look really pretty in that outfit,’” Kelly shared, to which the daughter in question “turned to her, and she looked her up and down—I watched her—and she goes, ‘You look gross.’”
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Kelly admits that she has “tried everything” when it comes to trying to correct the little girl’s behavior. “I’m trying to be mild with it.”
“I have tried sending you to your room. I've tried taking things away. I have tried just talking to you like a young woman that you are nothing is working. I'm exhausted, and I told her I was like, it's not fair to your sisters that all of my energy right now is going to you every day,” Kelly explained on the podcast.
The mom then asked her daughter point blank why her behavior has been so bad. “‘You are causing issues. I don’t know if it’s for attention. Tell me, do you need more from me? Is there something going on in your life that I’m not aware of?’”
That’s when her daughter broke down, telling her mom that she doesn’t :know why I’m so bad.”
Kelly continued, saying that she let her daughter know that “I love you so much, but we're gonna have to figure this out.” And that’s when she gave her daughter an ultimatum.
“If anything happens again like this, where I just see you being mean and a bully for no reason, the walk to school takes 30 minutes,” she shared. “You will be walking every morning and every afternoon so you can clear your head.”
On the third day of school, Kelly said she received a call that her daughter did “something not appropriate in my eyes. I make her walk home.”
Kelly admitted, “I cried the entire f***ing time she was walking home. And my (other) daughters cried when I left her, but I was like, 'I don’t know what to do.'”
“I don’t know if it’s because I also have comparisons of girls who are so sweet and kind and do the right things and try to at least,” she added. “And I know that, like, everyone's like, ‘Oh, well, one's gonna rebel. You're gonna have that one child that goes off the tracks.’ One, I don't believe that. And two, like, I don't want that to happen,” the mom of four said as she got emotional.
Days after sharing the episode, Kelly took to her Instagram Story saying “I greatly appreciate all the advice” she’s received from other parents. “I am looking into all of it. I want to make sure this is just a phase and nothing more. Thank you for all the support.”
