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In the Teen Mom: The Next Chapter premiere, Leah breaks down in tears after she and her 15-year-old daughter — who has muscular dystrophy — get into an argument about Ali’s resistance to using her wheelchair at school.
Leah Messer is opening up about navigating her daughter Ali’s muscular dystrophy as the 15-year-old takes a big step in her life: high school.
In an interview with TooFab ahead of the new season of Teen Mom: The Next Chapter, the reality star — who shares Ali and her twin sister Aleeah with ex-husband Corey Simms — spoke about the challenges she faces to protect her daughter amid her condition, while also encouraging her to make her own decisions.
“It’s a challenge. Probably one of the hardest things I’ve gone through this far with being a mom and navigating her having muscular dystrophy,” Leah said. “And knowing how to keep her safe, and also allowing her to be independent and get around just like everyone else. … There’s no really no answers. You get to be safe.”
“The reason why we’ve been able to maintain the strength that she has now is through physical therapy. And really keeping everything kind of stabilized with having muscular dystrophy, but she’s also got a voice, and she can use it,” she continued. “And we’re finding balance in all of that because I want her to use her voice and been teaching her, you know, to speak up and use your voice.”
“We’re working through it, and we’ll continue to do that,” Leah added.
In a preview clip from the upcoming season (below), Leah and Ali — who was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy when she was only four years old — get into an argument after the latter refuses to bring her wheelchair with her to a high school football game. After dropping both Ali and Aleeah off at the game, Leah broke down in tears as she drove away, before she stopped her car and continued to cry while expressing her frustration with producers.
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Leah said that since the episode, which was seemingly shot in the fall at the start of the school year, Ali has been “more open” and is using her wheelchair “more often.”
“I think she’s found ways that works for her, and you’ll see that play out in the season,” she told TooFab. “At the beginning of the season, at first, she was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ And then she kind of starts opening up, ‘Okay, I will use it for longer distances.’ And that’s all her dad and I were asking of her is to use it for those long distances and to protect her and keep her safe. And she does. She comes around.”
“But it’s a challenge,” Leah reiterated, “and it still is, even to this day. It can be a challenge.”
“She has a teenage brain too, right now,” she then joked joked.
Ali was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy in 2014. Muscular dystrophy is defined as a group of genetic diseases that progressively damage and weaken the muscles over time.
Teen Mom: The Next Chapter premieres on Thursday, January 30 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on MTV.
