Welcome to Plathville star Lydia Plath can still recall details of her 17-month-old brother Joshua’s tragic death.
“I remember specific details about his childhood. I remember that afternoon he was sleeping on his blanket in the sun, and then every detail of the accident I remember all too well,” Lydia, 21, said on the Wednesday, January 7, episode of the “Unplanned” podcast. “I was in the car when it happened.”
Lydia’s mom, Kim Plath, accidentally ran over son Joshua with a vehicle in 2008. The death was ruled accidental and Joshua’s cause of death was listed as “head injuries.” (Kim and ex-husband Barry Plath also share nine other children: Ethan, Hosanna, Micah, Moriah, Lydia, Isaac, Amber, Cassia and Mercy.)
“My mom, like, freaked out, got out [and] pulled him out from under the car,” Lydia, who was 4 years old at the time, recalled. “Then her and all my siblings ran to the house to grab the phone. Isaac and I were in the car, and I got out and I saw [Joshua] and it was terrible. I go back in the car and I told Isaac, ‘Don’t look. Just get out the other door.’”
Lydia Plath Is ‘Jealous’ of Sister Who Chose Not to Be on Reality TV
Keep scrolling more of Lydia’s candid memories about her upbringing and how she is honoring Joshua’s memory:
Grieving Joshua After His Tragic Death
“Our household wasn’t necessarily one to just talk about everything and be vulnerable when that happened,” Lydia tearfully said. “We didn’t know how to talk about it, especially with it being in the hands of my mom, we weren’t going to dare talk about it around her.”
According to Lydia, it felt like her family had to “shut off [their] emotions” in order to move forward.
“I can see it in my mom sometimes of, ‘Does she know how to connect and how to feel and how to know her emotions and all those things?’” she said. “Other times I can imagine she can’t because she’s had to shut that off because it’s too painful. So, I think [Joshua’s death] definitely affected our family more than most of them realize because it happened so long ago.”
She continued, “I think the hardest part, for me as I’ve grown up, was how little he was acknowledged. I don’t think I visited his grave until I was 9 because it was too hard to go back to.”
Growing Up Plath
Kim and Barry raised their children on a farm in rural Georgia with strict rules about everything from diets to technology.
“Everything we ate was organic [and] natural. We grew a lot of our own stuff,” Lydia said on Wednesday. “It was like we were really healthy and active and grew up on 45 acres with horses, cows, chickens [and] ducks. We all had our own garden at one point.”
Why Kim and Barry Plath ‘Sheltered’ Their Children
“My parents both just experienced a lot in the world and wanted to protect us from that,” Lydia said. “My mom was an only child with a single alcoholic mother and her mom wasn’t really in her life until she was, like, 12 years old.”
After Kim’s “rough childhood,” she didn’t want her children to face the same struggles.
“That led to just being a lot more sheltered than most people, which I think there’s definitely an aspect of that,” Lydia acknowledged. “But, I don’t think you need to pretend it doesn’t exist to protect your kids from it.”
Misconceptions of the Plath Family’s Religious Beliefs
While speaking on the “Unplanned” podcast, Lydia denied that Kim and Barry’s strict guidelines were motivated by religion.
“I was raised in a Christian home, but I don’t think my parents did a really good job of, like, I never perceived that the way I was raised was because that’s what God wanted,” Lydia said. “It was more just a lifestyle that my mom wanted. She wanted to have lots of children, she wanted land [and] all these things.”
The Plaths primarily practiced their religion by reading the Bible as a unit and occasionally hosting or attending “home groups” with other local families.
“We weren’t a part of a church,” Lydia said. “It was always hard finding people who were, like, families who were truly after the heart of the father and not just a lifestyle or legalistic or production of all these things.”
According to Lydia, the Plaths also did not practice fundamentalism or IBLP like the Duggars.
How Kim and Barry Plath’s Divorce Affected Their Kids
Kim and Barry announced in 2022 that they had separated after two decades of marriage.
“I think there was a point, shortly after my parents separated, where I didn’t want anything to do with any relationships,” Lydia said. “It’s like, ‘What’s the point’ type of thing [because] this one marriage that you’ve looked up to your whole life has come to [almost] nothing.”
After “working through” her feelings, Lydia ultimately found love with now-husband Zac Wyse.
“I’m not going to let fear hold me back from anything that’s not the reason I do or don’t do something,” she stated. “With [my marriage], my parents had been separated for three years from when we met, so I had time to process that.”
Lydia and Wyse got married in February 2025, one month after Kim and Barry settled their divorce.
Zac Wyse Addresses Rumors About His Sexuality
Shortly after Wyse proposed to Lydia, his future brother-in-law Ethan questioned whether he was secretly gay.
“I didn’t feel the need to fuel that fire ‘cause I wanted to give fuel to what was going well,” Wyse said, revealing how he informed Lydia of the comments without giving them much weight. “There was a lot of things that happened, and I did tell her about a lot of them in due time when they were necessary.”
Lydia Plath and Zac Wyse Are Ready to Have Babies ‘Soon’
Lydia proclaimed on the podcast that she’s had “baby fever forever” and is eager to become a mom in the forthcoming year or two.
“We decided [to] wait a year and have the conversation,” Wyse said. “I think we want to be parents pretty soon, just young parents.”