Five children, five mothers and one sentence that has aged badly: Howard left Dancing with the Stars in November 2024 and retired from basketball in March 2026

Dwight Howard’s 5 Children: Braylon, Layla, Jayde, Trey and David

Braylon is the eldest and the only one of the five who is legally an adult, having turned 18 on 18 November 2025. Layla and Jayde then arrived in the same calendar year, 2010, to two different mothers. Trey and David repeated the pattern three years later, born roughly six months apart in 2013 to two more. That is the real shape of this family: five children, five separate parent branches, and two pairs of half-siblings who share a birth year but not a mother. The dates below come from People’s family profile, last updated on 17 December 2025, and from the long Sports Illustrated profile of 19 September 2017, which remains the only detailed contemporaneous account of how the five households worked. The same headline number can describe a completely different family: the five children in Wayne Gretzky’s family all come from one marriage, which is why that page needs no branch map at all.

The line that dates almost every rival page is “now competing on Dancing with the Stars”. He did compete, on season 33, which premiered on 17 September 2024 under hosts Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough. He danced with Daniella Karagach, dedicated a week four rumba to his children, and was eliminated on 12 November 2024 in the show’s 500th episode. He was then named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2025, enshrined that September, and announced his retirement from all basketball on 12 March 2026. A present-tense television credit from 2024 is roughly two years behind the man.

Four of the five are minors on 20 August 2026. KidsCo therefore records only what Howard and the children’s mothers chose to make public: names, birth order, parentage, birth dates, dated ages and the handful of milestones the adults themselves published. No schools, no team names, no home addresses, no medical detail, and no career labels reverse-engineered from a courtside photograph. Braylon is an adult, and even for him a single reported sentence is treated as a dated report rather than a profession.

Dwight Howard’s children at a glance

The count stopped at five in December 2013 and has not moved since. Every child arrived inside a six-year window between November 2007 and December 2013, and each one has a different mother. Sports Illustrated stated that structure plainly in September 2017, People’s family profile lists the same five names after its December 2025 update, and Howard’s own Wikipedia biography records the same five. No sixth child appears in any of them.

Do the age arithmetic once and the numbers on rival pages stop looking like errors. Braylon turned 18 on 18 November 2025 and stays 18 until 18 November 2026. Jayde turned 15 on 29 December 2025 and stays 15 until 29 December 2026. Trey turned 13 in June 2026. David turned 12 on 14 December 2025 and turns 13 on 14 December 2026. That is why a September 2024 profile, a January 2026 magazine update and this guide can print four different sets of numbers without disagreeing about a single birth certificate.

Layla is the one child a single number cannot fix. The strongest sources set her birth year at 2010 and place her ahead of Jayde, who was born on 29 December that year, but they do not give her day or month. That leaves two possible answers on 20 August 2026: 16 if her birthday has already gone this year, 15 if it is still ahead of her. The durable facts are the ones worth keeping: she is Howard’s second child and first daughter, born in 2010 to Tiffany Render, and older than her sister by somewhere between one day and eleven months. The same gap sits in Steve Jobs’ family, where Erin Siena Jobs’s birth is fixed to 1995 and no further, so her age is published as 30 or 31 rather than as one number.

Who are the mothers of Dwight Howard’s five children?

Braylon’s mother is Royce Reed, who danced for the Orlando Magic during Howard’s years with the franchise. Layla’s mother is Tiffany Render. Jayde’s mother is Hope Alexa, described in contemporary reporting as a fitness model. Trey’s mother is Christine Vest. David’s mother was Melissa Rios, who died on 27 March 2020. Five names, five separate branches, and no household that ever contained more than one of them.

The five-branch structure is the whole answer to the question most people are actually typing. A profile that flattens these women into “his ex” builds a household that never existed, gives the children a shared history they do not have, and makes the birth order look like a mistake. Athlete families with several branches are common enough to be a genre of their own, and the same discipline applies to Cristiano Ronaldo’s children, where the count only makes sense once each branch is named separately.

Howard and Royce Reed have a long public and legal history, documented in reporting going back to Braylon’s childhood. It is also the reason so much of what surfaces about Braylon online is court-flavoured rather than family-flavoured. KidsCo does not build a child’s profile out of litigation between his parents, so the disputes are named here as context for the search results and left there.

Braylon Howard, the eldest and the only adult

Braylon was born on 18 November 2007, the first of the five and the one date every profile agrees on. He turned 18 on 18 November 2025, which makes him 18 on 20 August 2026 and 19 on 18 November 2026. He is also the reason the family’s span reads as six years rather than five: every other date in this guide is measured against his.

Howard marked Braylon’s 16th birthday in November 2023 with a public post carrying throwback photographs. “Wow, it’s been 16 years since you came into this world,” he wrote. “You are my firstborn, and it fills my heart with joy to see your wonderful smile and the cheerful spirit you carry with you.” That is a parent-published milestone with a date attached, which is exactly the class of material this guide will use about a child.

People’s profile adds one line about Braylon following his father into sport at high-school level. One reported sentence with no roster, no credit and no institutional listing behind it is a dated report, not a sporting career, and this guide names no school and no team for any Howard child. Now that Braylon is an adult, the bar for saying what he does rises rather than falls: it needs a credited professional record, and there is not one in the sources reviewed here.

Layla and Jayde: two daughters, one birth year, two mothers

Layla arrived in 2010 to Howard and Tiffany Render. Jayde arrived later the same year, on 29 December 2010, to Howard and Hope Alexa. Two daughters, one calendar year, two households, and a gap between them that could be anything from a day to most of a year. Jayde’s date is the firmest of the two because Howard confirmed it himself in a birthday post that ended with the tag “#12/29”, which is a parent stating a date in his own words rather than a database guessing one.

Both sisters have stayed almost entirely out of public view, and the record reflects that. Howard posted photographs of a hike with both girls in August 2022 with the caption “make the most out of every moment”. Layla joined him in a June 2023 clip watching the NBA Finals, the pair joking that they were the best father-daughter duo going. In the summer of 2024, Jayde travelled with her father and Trey while he was playing in Taiwan, taking in Tokyo and the Philippines. Three dated moments in three years, plus one birthday post, is close to the whole public file, and that is a fact about the family rather than a gap in the research. A parent can draw that line harder still. Ed Sheeran’s two daughters have names, birth windows and a set of songs written for them, and no photograph of either girl has ever been released.

Braylon has a recruiting profile, a jersey number and box scores behind him. Layla and Jayde have three dated photographs and a birthday post. That is a difference in paperwork, not in standing: both girls are Howard’s daughters on exactly the terms Braylon is his son. So their section ends where the file ends, because the only way to extend it is to import numbers from profile databases that never met them.

One more thing worth clearing up, because it drives a steady stream of mistaken searches: Jayde Howard is not the Jayde who appears in reality television family guides. That is a different child in a different family, as Maci Bookout’s three children sets out. Same first name, no connection, and the two are worth keeping apart before you repeat a birth date from the wrong page.

Trey and David: two sons, six months apart, in the same year

Dwight David Howard III was born in June 2013 to Howard and Christine Vest, and answers to Trey, the traditional nickname for a third in the line. The naming runs three deep: Howard’s father is Dwight Howard Sr., the basketball player is recorded as Dwight David Howard II, and Trey is the third. Because only the month and year of his birth are established, his age still resolves cleanly. He turned 13 in June 2026, so he is 13 on 20 August 2026 whichever day in June is the right one.

David was born on 14 December 2013 to Howard and Melissa Rios, six months and a few days behind his half-brother, to a different mother. Two sons, one year, two branches, and the second time the family produced a same-year pair. It is the single most misread thing about this household, and it is also the reason a page that lists the children by age alone will keep putting them in the wrong order.

Trey has the clearest parent-led public moment of any of the five. At the season 33 premiere of Dancing with the Stars, host Julianne Hough asked Howard why he had joined the show and he pointed into the audience. “Really, for my son, he’s here in the audience, Trey Howard,” he said. Three weeks later the couple danced a rumba to “Shoot for the Stars”, a track of Howard’s own, and dedicated it to his children. Both are dated, both were the father’s choice to make public, and neither tells you anything about who Trey is going to be.

David’s most-cited public appearance is the December 2021 premiere of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which he attended with his father. A red-carpet photograph of an eight-year-old proves that an eight-year-old stood on a red carpet. It is not a residence, a school, a relationship status or a personality, and it is not the opening line of a career profile.

Where the five children live, and the one change on the record

The only detailed, sourced account of how this family was organised is the Sports Illustrated profile of 19 September 2017. It reported that all five children lived primarily with their mothers, spread across three states, while Howard was based in Atlanta playing for the Hawks. All five visited Atlanta in the off-season, the family kept in touch by video call and text, and that summer Howard rented a house in Aspen, Colorado for a week and took the whole group hiking, fly fishing and rafting.

That is a 2017 arrangement, and it is reported here as one. Nine years on it establishes how the households were structured at the time of a named interview and nothing about where any child sleeps tonight. This guide gives no current city, neighbourhood or address for any of the five, and does not map individual children onto the states that profile listed.

One change is documented well enough to state flatly. Melissa Rios died on 27 March 2020, aged 31, after an epileptic seizure. David, who was six, has lived primarily with his father since. That is the whole of it: a date, an age, a cause and a custody outcome. There is no medical chronology here and no account of how a child felt, because neither belongs on a page about a family.

What Dwight Howard is actually doing in 2026

Dwight David Howard II was born on 8 December 1985 in Atlanta to Dwight Sr., a Georgia state trooper, and Sheryl Howard. He is 40 on 20 August 2026 and turns 41 on 8 December 2026. He went first overall in the 2004 NBA draft to the Orlando Magic, took them to the 2009 Finals, won a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020, and finished with eight All-Star selections and three Defensive Player of the Year awards. Readers who like a Lakers thread will find the same era running through Kobe and Vanessa Bryant’s four daughters.

His last NBA season was 2021 to 2022. On 7 November 2022 he signed with the Taoyuan Leopards of Taiwan’s T1 League, which waived its usual import salary ceiling for him, and he opened with 38 points and 25 rebounds on 19 November. In May 2024 he agreed to return to Taiwan with the Mustangs in the Asian Tournament. That is the stretch during which Jayde and Trey travelled with him, which is why the family photographs from that summer are datelined Tokyo and the Philippines rather than Georgia.

Then came the television run that froze so many profiles. Howard was announced in the Dancing with the Stars season 33 cast on 4 September 2024, premiered on 17 September with Daniella Karagach, and was eliminated on 12 November 2024 in the show’s 500th episode. The season itself ended on 26 November 2024 with Joey Graziadei lifting the trophy. The co-host who introduced him each week has his own KidsCo family guide, at Alfonso Ribeiro’s four children.

On 5 April 2025 he was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2025, elected twice over: once as an individual player and once as a member of the 2008 United States Olympic team. The class was enshrined across the weekend of 5 and 6 September 2025 at Mohegan Sun and at the Hall itself in Springfield. He then announced his retirement from basketball on 12 March 2026, going out with a line that belongs in a family guide as much as a sports one: he was “taking off the cape and retiring from all basketball to pour into my family and give back to communities worldwide”.

What current Dwight Howard profiles should correct

The first row is the one that matters most, because it is not ordinary drift. A page carrying an “updated 2026” stamp while describing a 2024 television run in the present tense tells a reader the date at the top cannot be trusted, and once that goes the birth dates go with it. Fixing the verb tense is a smaller job than rebuilding the reader’s confidence afterwards.

The last row catches more people than it should. Bryce Dallas Howard belongs to a completely separate family, set out in Bryce Dallas Howard’s two children, and no fact should ever travel between the two pages. The same rule applies to every same-surname near miss: a claim attaches to a named, verified parent branch or it does not go on the page at all. For a comparable NBA household with several branches and a lot of bad copy attached to it, see Dennis Rodman’s children.

Dwight Howard family timeline, and what each date establishes

The right-hand column answers the guide’s own question. Six of the ten rows are durable records that will never change: a birth date does not expire. Three are dated events that were already over when most competing pages were written. One, the retirement, is the current status as of the check date at the top of this page, and it is written that way on purpose.

Questions people ask about Dwight Howard’s children

How many children does Dwight Howard have?

Dwight Howard has five children by five different mothers: Braylon, Layla, Jayde, Dwight III, who is known as Trey, and David. They were born between November 2007 and December 2013, and the count has not changed since.

What are the birth dates of Dwight Howard’s children?

Braylon was born on 18 November 2007, Layla in 2010, Jayde on 29 December 2010, Trey in June 2013 and David on 14 December 2013. Layla’s exact day and month are not fixed by the sources used here, only her birth year.

How old are Dwight Howard’s children in 2026?

On 20 August 2026 Braylon is 18, Jayde is 15, Trey is 13 and David is 12. Layla is 15 or 16, since only her birth year is established. Every age on this page is calculated on that stated check date.

Who are the mothers of Dwight Howard’s children?

Royce Reed is Braylon’s mother, Tiffany Render is Layla’s, Hope Alexa is Jayde’s, Christine Vest is Trey’s and Melissa Rios was David’s. Rios died on 27 March 2020, aged 31, after an epileptic seizure.

Is Dwight Howard still on Dancing with the Stars?

No. Howard competed on season 33, which premiered on 17 September 2024, partnered with Daniella Karagach. He was eliminated on 12 November 2024 in the show’s 500th episode, and the season ended on 26 November 2024 with Joey Graziadei winning.

Which of Dwight Howard’s children lives with him?

David has lived primarily with his father since his mother, Melissa Rios, died in March 2020. Sports Illustrated reported in 2017 that all five children lived primarily with their mothers, which was the arrangement before that change.