Britney Spears’s ex-husband Kevin Federline has shockingly claimed their children would wake up to find their mother holding a knife while watching them sleep at their bedroom door.
Federline, 47, dropped the alleged bombshell in his upcoming memoir, You Thought You Knew, according to an excerpt obtained by the New York Times.
Spears, 43, reportedly has had a strained relationship with the two children she shares with her former spouse these last few years, and Federline alleges their sons – Sean Preston, 19, and Jayden, 18 – no longer wanted to visit their mother at home in their teen years – citing fear as one of their reasons.
‘They would awaken sometimes at night to find her standing silently in the doorway, watching them sleep — “Oh, you’re awake?” — with a knife in her hand,’ Federline wrote in the excerpt obtained by The Times. ‘Then she’d turn around and pad off without explanation.’
Federline also wrote about his growing concerns about his ex after she began behaving erratically.
He laid bare his fears Spears was hurtling towards an ‘irreversible’ direction: ‘The truth is, this situation with Britney feels like it’s racing toward something irreversible,’ Federline said in the book.
‘It’s become impossible to pretend everything’s OK,’ Federline adds. ‘From where I sit, the clock is ticking, and we’re getting close to the 11th hour. Something bad is going to happen if things don’t change, and my biggest fear is that our sons will be left holding the pieces.’
Federline’s memoir also reflects on the night in 2008 when Spears was committed to the psych ward of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and placed on a 5150 psychiatric hold, after she refused to relinquish custody of her sons to Federline.
Federline called it ‘one of the hardest nights of my life’ as he watched his partner in the midst of the ordeal.
‘I felt sick over what she was going through. This was someone I had loved. Someone I had built a life with. The mother of my children,’ he wrote.
The event came just before Spears was placed on her conservatorship, which was terminated after 13 years amid support from the Free Britney movement.
But Federline feels the movement had unintended consequences on the pop star’s current wellbeing.
While he says the support for ending the arrangement probably ‘started from a good place’, he notes it may have scared off professionals from helping his ex after seeing the backlash her inner circle received from Free Britney followers.
‘All those people who put so much effort into that,’ he wrote, ‘should now put the same energy into the “Save Britney” movement. Because this is no longer about freedom. It’s about survival.’
Federline admitted to The Times he has not spoken with Spears about what he has written.
‘I’ve never, ever, once, been against Britney,’ he told the publication. ‘I’ve only tried to help my sons have an incredible relationship with their mother. And it’s hard because when I really reflect on everything that’s happened — my kids do not know the woman that I married. And I’ve spent two decades trying to bridge that gap.’
In her memoir, Spears said she ‘never had a drinking problem’ nor any desire to take hard drugs, yet she did admit to taking Adderall, an ADHD medication. She also described struggling with postpartum depression during their contentious split and custody battle.
‘Kevin tried to convince everyone that I was completely out of control,’ Spears wrote. ‘He started to say I shouldn’t have my kids anymore — at all.’
The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Spears for comment regarding Federline’s claims but have not yet heard back. A spokesperson for the pop star declined comment to The Times.
Federline’s knife allegation is reminiscent to a claim Spears’s sister Jamie made in her 2022 memoir Things I Never Said, in which she claimed her scared sibling locked them in a room together while holding a knife – an allegation the Lucky singer denied as ‘crazy lies’.
Spears famously wed the back-up dancer in 2004 after a whirlwind romance and they welcomed two children together.
But the marriage fell apart just two years later, with Federline filing for divorce in 2006. They both became legally single the following year and Federline gained full custody of their kids after her 5150 hospitalization.
Spears is said to have endured a strained relationship with her children in recent years, with the kids even moving to Hawaii with their father in August 2023.
However, a source told The Daily Mail that the children surprised their mother with a visit this past Christmas. As of late, she has grown closer to Jayden.
In a press release about the book, set for release on October 21, Federline said his memoir will reveal ‘extremely intimate and transparent’ details about their ‘highly publicized marriage’.
‘I achieved my biggest dreams, dealt with crushing heartbreak and endured constant ridicule, all while becoming the father my children needed as they experienced non-stop emotional turbulence,’ the former backup dancer detailed.
The memoir has drawn the ire of Spears’s ex-husband Sam Asghari, whom she married then divorced in recent years.
‘Well, he was a professional father so he would be a great… it would be the first book that’ll tell you how to be a professional father,’ Sam told TMZ, seemingly referencing child support payments Federline received from Spears.
