Amber Portwood and Gary Shirley’s daughter is reflecting on her parents’ past.
The Teen Mom stars’ 16-year-old daughter Leah Shirley revealed that she has seen troubling videos from her parents involved in fights that were featured on earlier episodes of the franchise.
“My friend messaged me and she’s like, ‘Are you on a TV show?’” Leah revealed to Gary during the Feb. 20 episode of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter. “And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And she’s like, ‘A video just popped up on my TikTok.’ "And I was like, ‘Oh.’”
“It’s just weird,” Leah added. “I’ve been seeing a lot of TikTok videos with old clips and stuff.”
Leah—who lives with her father, his wife Kristina Anderson and their daughter Emilee, 7, full-time—admitted that the videos have been painful to watch, as it shows her parents in heated verbal and physical disputes.
"I see the older ones from when I was, like, 2,” she revealed. “And it’s just weird to watch because it’s always, like, Amber screaming at you and you leave. And then there’s one clip where she’s yelling, like, ‘Why is Leah crying?’—when she’s in a complete opposite room, just leaving me. And it’s just weird. I think those ones are kinda painful to watch because it’s little me.”
Leah’s relationship with her mom Amber has been strained as she does not have custody of the teen as well as her 6-year-old son James, whom she shares with her ex-boyfriend Andrew Glennon.
According to Leah, she hasn’t had contact with her mother in four months, sharing that the abandonment has caused a fear in her life.
“I just think I have a lot of issues because of Amber,” she explained to her dad. “And the experiences that I’ve had.”
For Gary, his daughter’s confession made him wish that he would have done more to prevent her hurt from her mother.
“Honestly, Leah, no joke, I wish I would have done more,” Gary said. “I wish I would have just took you and left instantly. And not left you there. It wasn’t, like, she technically had custody.”
Leah assured her father that it wasn’t his fault telling him, “It’s okay. I don’t remember it.”
However, Gary shared that he was aware that the videos could bring up “trauma” and suggested therapy for Leah so she could heal properly. A decision she’s all for.
“I want to overcome that,” Leah told her father. “So, I can be able to forgive her and just move on. I think it would help to have someone to guide me on how to forgive someone because it’s hard for me to do that.”
