Kandi Burruss Made Daughter Riley ‘Sign Contracts’ as to Get Toys (Exclusive)

Kandi Burress had some unique parenting tactics for keeping daughter Riley honest.

“My one rule with her was she always had to keep her grades up, and she always did,” Kandi, 49, says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, adding how proud she is of the Next Gen NYC star.

“She applied and graduated from [NYU] without any real help from us, did everything herself, and now she is doing what she said she’d do. She graduated in four years and has her own TV show, and it’s a hit. She’s growing in her own light and shining,” says Kandi.

Riley, 23, whose dad is Kandi’s ex Russell Spencer, tells PEOPLE there’s one thing her mom used to make her do to keep her on track: sign contracts.

“I don’t think a lot of people know this, but my mom used to make me sign contracts!” says Riley with a laugh. “I wanted an Xbox 360, and my mom said I could get one if I did swim team for the full year, and she made me sign a contract that said if I quit, she could throw it away.”

Kandi says the contracts worked: “She has to remember there are expectations of her!”

It should come as no shock then that Riley has her sights set on law school next and began studying for the LSAT after graduating from NYU in 2024. “I think that’s why I’m so into law now. I grew up signing contracts,” she says. 

Still, she notes that she was lucky to have a mom with whom she could easily talk. “My mom also was an amazing mom,” Riley says. “So growing up, my mom kind of taught me from a young age what to do, how to do it. So I never really had a reason to act out. I never really felt like I wanted to act out. Never.”

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Kandi agrees that her daughter made it easy on her. “Riley was actually really good,” she says. “She didn’t start getting crazy until she moved here to New York! We used to have a lot of fun. We’d do so many activities, go to Six Flags all the time, go to the movies. We were always doing something, and she always did well in school — she didn’t give me any problems whatsoever, to be honest with you.”

But can the same be said for Kandi?

“There was some mischief,” says Kandi’s mom, “Mama Joyce” Jones. “But I found out about it later, like I learned her stepfather had taught her to drive and she’d take my car and drive around the neighborhood with her friends.”

Joyce continues, “But overall, she was a really good kid. She was very, very smart. It was hard to discipline her because if I sent her to her room, all she wanted to do was read. So it was hard to say ‘Go to your room!’ because that was not really a discipline — she would just happily read!”