Ten years after Kate Plus 8 debuted on TLC, Kate Gosselin looks back on the last decade with no regrets … well, except one pretty big one.
And what would that be, exactly?
“Needing to be so in control.”
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about the messes and the obsessive compulsiveness,” Gosselin, 41, tells People.
“I would spend more time nibbling little feet and cuddling up … I worried about so many things I just didn’t need to be worrying about.”
She concedes this may have impacted not only her marriage to Jon Gosselin (obviously), but her own mental health and her children’s.
“When they were still so young, I came on way too strong. I should have just rolled around on the floor some,” Gosselin laments now.
“I wouldn’t have melted down as much.”
It’s hard to believe that on May 14, 2006, Gosselin and her then-husband Jon first opened up their home to viewers around the world.
The Jon & Kate Plus 8 tandem became instant stars, what with their day to day trials and tribulations and cute kids … all eight of them.
Raising twins Mady and Cara, then five, and 16-month-old sextuplets Aaden, Alexis, Collin, Hannah, Leah and Joel, was never easy.
Still, times were good for them … or at least relatively stable. Then Kate and Jon divorced in 2009, in incredibly ugly and public fashion.
Jon got the chop from the show, which was later rebranded as Kate Plus 8 as both parents fell apart physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Scandals, drama and bickering made the duo a non-stop source of tabloid fodder for more years than their show was on in its heyday.
Despite all that she’s been through, Gosselin remains encouraged, believing that she’s come out of the last decade stronger than before.
“When you’re younger, you may have more energy, but when you’re older, you’re wiser,” she says. “We’ve been through so much.”
“From the divorce to issues with Collin,” she adds, “now I see that the other things I thought were important are just not.”
Perspective. It’s a valuable thing.
As for Collin’s issues …
Kate tells the celebrity news magazine that she’s enrolled her 12-year-old son in a program away from home to help him reach his full potential.
Meaning?
“Collin has special needs,” Kate says.
“[There’s] a fairly fluid diagnosis of what those needs are, but he needs to learn certain strategies to help him deal with things.”
“This has been a struggle we’ve had for a very long time, and it’s one I’ve dealt with on my own. I’ve felt very alone in this.”
“By the same token, it’s not something that has only impacted me or him … our entire family has been impacted.”
That’s incredibly vague, but the warning signs go all the way back to 2010, when Collin was expelled from school.
There were also child abuse accusations against Kate as recently as March 2015, when she allegedly manhandled Collin.
In any case, we hope he’s getting whatever help he needs, and that the family – mom, dad and kids – are all in a better place lately.
Goodness knows they haven’t always been.