A Christmas reunion doesn’t mean that Jill Dillard (née Duggar) and Derick Dillard have patched things up in their relationship with her father, Jim Bob Duggar.
After the trio was seen conversing in the background of one of James Duggar’s 2024 Christmas Day photos, Derick set the record straight on whether he and Jill were back on good terms with Jim Bob.
“Just so people know, Jim Bob approached me while we were there on Christmas Day for about 5 minutes, and I do not respect him,” he wrote in the comments section of an Instagram post that referenced the reunion. “I don’t think that is considered ‘mingling.’ There were over 100 people, the house is 8000 square feet, and Santa Claus was there, so this isn’t your typical intimate family gathering.”
He continued, “I have spoken with him less than 10 minutes since the last time we were at that house, which was over a year ago. We’re trying to be civil for the sake of our family, but that doesn’t mean everything is all hunky dorey [sic], and it sure doesn’t mean that I’m not going to comment when people try to warm reality for their own purposes.”
The Dillards have been estranged from Jim Bob since they took part in the Prime Video docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets in June 2023. “My dad does control a lot of things in the family,” Jill said in one scene. “Family relationships were already kinda rocky. Everything within the family dynamic has shifted, and not for the better.”
James Duggar/Instagram
A few months later, the couple continued to expose secrets about Jill’s upbringing in their memoir, Counting the Cost. Among other bombshells, they claimed that Jim Bob didn’t pay them to appear on the family’s reality shows, 19 Kids & Counting and Counting On.
In November 2024, Jill admitted that her relationship with her parents is still “complicated.” However, she added, “I feel like we are in a rebuilding phase now with healthy boundaries still in place. We try to hang out whenever it works well and we have the bandwidth to navigate things.”
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