After an admittedly up-and-down year managing her daughters’ emotions, Kelly Stafford celebrated a hopeful step in the right direction.
Kelly, the wife of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, revealed that three of her four daughters attended cotillion on Thursday, November 13.
Named after a popular 18th century dance, cotillion classes are designed to teach middle school-aged children proper etiquette and manners.
Kelly, 36, shared a picture of her three oldest girls in flowy dresses and Matthew, 37, via Instagram captioned: “Cotillion ❤️.”
Matthew and Kelly, who met during their time at the University of Georgia, share four daughters: twins Sawyer and Chandler, 8, Hunter, 7, and Tyler, 5.
Kelly has opened up about her daughters’ behavioral issues on her podcast, “The Morning After,” which have dramatically reared their heads in recent months.
In March, Kelly revealed she had decided to abruptly cancel her twins’ 8th birthday party.
“This has been an ongoing thing for the last couple of months where the attitudes have come into play,” Kelly said on the podcast. “I’m struggling to parent it. I am an enforcer. I am probably the mean parent. Matthew has now turned also. We tried the ‘good cop, bad cop’ situation that we always are. Clearly it’s not working because nothing has changed.”
She added, “We told them, ‘Birthday party is off because we cannot honestly celebrate you guys right now just because of the way you’re behaving. We love you, but I don’t think you should have a celebration.’ That was really how we both felt, Matthew and I.”
Kelly eventually reversed course, however, sharing photos from Sawyer and Chandler’s Paris-theme party via Instagram.
In August, Kelly got emotional discussing her youngest daughter, Tyler. (Given her age, Tyler did not appear to attend cotillion with her sisters.)
“One of my daughters I have been very, very much struggling with,” Kelly said. “Matthew as well. She has become a little girl that I don’t recognize.”
She added, “Nothing is working. I’m exhausted. And I told her, ‘It’s not fair to your sisters that all of my energy right now is going to you every day because you are acting up. You are causing issues. I don’t know if it’s for attention. Tell me, do you need more from me?’”
Ahead of their etiquette classes, Kelly revealed another major shift in the lives of her daughters, announcing in September that her girls would “hopefully” be attending a prestigious Christian school next year.
“I’m pumped for a lot of reasons,” Kelly said on her podcast. “One of them just being primarily that living in California, actually living anywhere in the world these days, the world is changing and at this state where I feel like at any moment it could just all blow up in our faces.”
She continued, “Just to give them the base and the values of Christianity every day, knowing they have something to turn back to if things get hard, I’m very excited about.”
Kelly told her sister, Jenny, that sending her daughters to Christian school will help mirror “how we grew up.”
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