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If you’ve ever watched “Dancing With The Stars,” you know the celebrity contestants often talk about their most challenging moments in life. Their hardships are often used as an inspiration for the routines, their stories endear them to the fans who will ultimately vote for them, it’s the human interest portion of the show.
So this when former NBA player Derek Fisher appeared on the show, he wanted to discuss his 11-year-old daughter Tatum’s bout with cancer. Doctors discovered cancer in Tatum’s eye when she was just 10- months-old. Fisher ran the idea of discussing Tatum’s cancer on the show past his ex-wife and Tatum’s mother Candace.
Candace refused.
But Derek and ABC ran Tatum’s story anyway. Not only that, they panned the camera over to her after her father’s routine, while she was in tears.
As you can imagine, Candace was not pleased.
According to The Blast, in a text message, she wrote: “I think it’s shameful and quite obvious that there is no level too low for you to go to play yourself and I don’t want the kids to have any part of it.”
Derek responded, “So let me get this straight, YOU walking around with my last name, collecting checks from me, living off my hard work and career earnings, have the nerve to even utter the word exploiting?”
You can read copies of the rest of the conversation, here.
It got ugly.
As a result, Candace is requesting that Derek no longer be allowed to publicly share any more information about their children.
They discussed this topic today on “The Real,” and debated about which parent was “right” and the overall morality of the issue.
I don’t have children and each child is different when it comes to what they may or may not want to share publicly.
And while I would think that beating cancer over a decade ago, would be something Tatum would be proud to share, there’s a good chance that her mother had a reason why she did not.
It would have been nice if the two parents had been able to come up with some type of agreement before he made a decision he knew she was going to be against.
What do you think about all of this? How would you have handled this situation if you and your child’s father couldn’t seem to come to an agreement?
