Kody and Janelle Brown’s Son Gabriel Struggled With Flagstaff Move: ‘He Feels Like We Uprooted Him’
It was tough on him. TLC aired a special sneak peek episode of the new season of Sister Wives on December 17, and Kody, Meri, Christine, Janelle and Robyn Brown revisited the resistance Janelle’s son, Gabriel Brown, had toward their big family move to Flagstaff, Arizona.
“So Gabe has been really struggling with the move,” Janelle, 50, explained. “He feels like we uprooted him, that he wanted to stay in Vegas to finish his school.”
The episode then showed a flashback of another scene where Gabe, now 18, and his mother discussed the move in the previous season of the TLC series. “Look, I know it’s hard,” Janelle said to her teenage son. “You’re leaving your girlfriend and all that. But we have a lot of outdoor stuff that we can do.” When one of Gabe’s brothers suggested that he could just move back to Las Vegas and live there “on his own,” Janelle put her foot down and said that wouldn’t be happening until he was an adult.
“Why can’t I just live with Maddie?” Gabriel asked, speaking of his older sister. “That’s not even on the table for discussion,” his mother responded.
Back in the “present,” Janelle continued in the sneak peek, “We felt like of course, that he should be with the family, and that he would benefit from being here. But he’s still not very happy about being here.”
Later, a producer asked several of the kids how they felt about the move, and Gabe answered, “The move? What about it? I mean, yeah, of course, I don’t want to move. But I mean, it’s not … it’s not a bad area to visit. … I feel displaced. I mean, I don’t have my room anymore. I don’t have my house. I’m just kind of bouncing around, going wherever I’m told. That’s about it.” Clearly, he’s still not thrilled with the decision.
“All the kids, except for Gabriel, have seen Coyote Pass,” Kody, 50, explained in the sneak peek. He later added, “Gabriel refused to come to Flagstaff until he’s forced on the day that we moved. So he’s seen nothing of this other than what we’re doing unloading these trucks.”
Previously, Kody said his son was “being extremely dramatic” about the move when the family initially discussed it. “I get it! It’s hard to move away from home. There important things at stake here. It is sad,” Kody tweeted in February. Hopefully, now that some time has passed since the Browns first moved, Gabe has adjusted and is feeling a little better about the change.
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