Growing up polygamist was HARD, and Mykelti Padron and Tony reveal shocking Sister Wives Season 20 secrets that rip the curtain back on years of silent struggle, emotional survival, and uncomfortable truths the cameras never fully captured, because according to them, what viewers saw as quirky chaos or unconventional family life was often a pressure cooker of unspoken rules, loyalty tests, and emotional landmines that shaped who the children became long before they had the language to describe it, and in this explosive new revelation, Mykelti admits that childhood in a polygamist household wasn’t just about sharing parents, it was about constantly negotiating your worth, your voice, and your place in a hierarchy that shifted depending on which marriage was thriving and which was falling apart at any given moment, and she doesn’t sugarcoat it, describing a home where love existed but attention was scarce, and where kids learned early how to shrink themselves to avoid becoming “another problem,” while Tony backs her up with blunt honesty, saying that what shocked him most when he married into the family wasn’t the plural structure itself, but how normalized emotional neglect had become, to the point where pain was treated as background noise rather than something that demanded care, and Season 20, according to them, is finally peeling back those layers, exposing moments producers once avoided because they were too raw, too critical, or too destabilizing to the long-running narrative of choice and faith, and Mykelti reveals that many of the adult conversations now unfolding on screen are ones the kids overheard fragments of growing up, arguments about money, favoritism, and loyalty that seeped into their consciousness even when they were told to “stay out of it,” shaping deep insecurities that followed them into adulthood, and one of the most shocking admissions is her claim that the children often felt like emotional pawns, unconsciously aligning themselves with whichever household felt safest at the time, not out of manipulation, but out of survival, because safety in a fractured family isn’t guaranteed, it’s earned through silence, compliance, or emotional labor far beyond what children should carry, and Tony doesn’t hold back either, calling out what he sees as a culture of avoidance that allowed problems to fester for decades, where accountability was blurred by religious justification and conflict resolution often meant “moving on” without ever actually healing, and he suggests that Season 20 is uncomfortable precisely because it refuses to let those old patterns slide, forcing adults to confront not just what they did, but what they normalized for their kids, and Mykelti adds that one of the hardest parts of growing up polygamist was learning that your feelings could unintentionally destabilize the entire family, meaning children learned to self-edit constantly, because expressing hurt might tip the balance between households or ignite tension between parents, and that burden, she says, doesn’t disappear when you grow up, it just mutates into anxiety, people-pleasing, and an almost reflexive fear of conflict, and fans will be stunned to hear her admit that some of the strongest sibling bonds were forged not through joy, but through shared confusion and quiet solidarity, whispered conversations about why dad wasn’t around, or why one mom seemed exhausted while another seemed protected, moments that built closeness but also deepened a sense of “us versus the system,” and Season 20 reportedly dives into those dynamics more directly than ever before, showing how the adult children are now processing their upbringing with language, boundaries, and perspectives they didn’t have as kids, which is why some scenes feel so emotionally volatile, because they aren’t just reacting to current events, they’re unpacking decades of stored emotion, and Tony reveals that marrying Mykelti meant unlearning his own assumptions about family, because what looked functional from the outside often relied on one or two people absorbing most of the emotional strain, and he hints that viewers will finally see how uneven that load really was, especially for the kids who learned early that love sometimes came with conditions, and perhaps the most jaw-dropping revelation is Mykelti’s admission that for a long time, she didn’t know who she was outside the family narrative, because individuality in a polygamist structure can feel like betrayal, and Season 20 captures her reclaiming that identity in ways that may upset viewers who are still attached to the old ideal, but she insists that honesty is no longer optional, because silence only protects dysfunction, and the tone of their revelations suggests that this season isn’t about assigning villains or heroes, but about naming harm, acknowledging complexity, and finally allowing the adult children to speak without being filtered through a parental lens, and fans expecting a nostalgic or reconciliatory arc may be caught off guard, because what Mykelti and Tony describe is not a neat wrap-up, but a reckoning, one where love and damage coexist, and where growing up polygamist is no longer framed as simply “different,” but as profoundly challenging in ways that deserve recognition, and as these secrets spill out, it becomes clear that Season 20 isn’t just another chapter, it’s a turning point, forcing the audience to confront the cost of the lifestyle not just on marriages, but on the children who grew up inside it, learning how to adapt, endure, and eventually, speak their truth, no matter how uncomfortable that truth may be.