Jon Gosselin gave Oprah an interview recently wherein he spoke about his eight children, his strained relationship with ex-wife Kate, and what the pressures of being on television will do to both kids and a marriage. Now, Kate has taken the opportunity to speak her mind about the whole thing on her blog and says she wants to set the record straight.
The Gosselin family gained fame on TLC with “Jon and Kate Plus 8”, which ran from 2007-2011, and the world watched twins Cara and Maddy and sextuplets–Aaden, Joel, Collin, Alexis, Hannah, and Leah–grow up on their television screens. While the show allowed the family to move into a much bigger home and travel the world, Jon says it also had negative effects on their development.
“It just became stressful on the kids and stressful on me,” Gosselin told Oprah. “You’re trying to keep your marriage together, and you’re trying to keep your family ties together…Yes, they got to travel the world, and yes, they got these fabulous things, and yes, they have trust funds, and they’re taken care of educationally. Great. But developmentally, they have problems with their peers, and they have problems with talking to other people, and they have problems with wants and needs and manners and morals and what’s right and what’s wrong. I think more so than someone who grows up off TV.”
Kate says that’s just not true, however, and wrote a lengthy blog post about the interview and Jon’s comments.
I find it very heart breaking that my children’s father chooses a public forum to discuss his current opinions of the “development” of our children. These opinions are, in reality, value judgements made about our children and they are based on his limited visits (albeit mutually agreed upon) with our children.
Because he has spoken negatively about our children, I feel I owe it to them to respond on their behalf. Each and every one of our children has met and continues to exceed all physical, mental and emotional developmental milestones throughout their lives. Their normal development is regularly monitored by myself, their pediatrician and school staff, as is usual within any family.
It is also very normal in a family, especially a large family, to have a full range of personalities, abilities, talents, hobbies and struggles. Ours is no different. However, anyone who has personally met our children all have the same thing to say: they are the most normal, pleasant, polite, loving and well adjusted children they have ever met. Most even go on to say that they are a “a delight” to be around.
When our kids grow up, they may see their father’s latest interview and wonder why he made untrue and hurtful statements about them. I know that I risk stirring up an unwanted public and private “frenzy” by commenting on this, but, if our children ever stumble upon that interview, I want to be able to point them to this statement so that they know that I publicly set the record 100% straight on this one, for their sake.
Jon, who is now a waiter at a Pennsylvania restaurant, says he and his ex-wife barely speak anymore and only communicate regarding the children.
“At this point, there is no cooperation, there is nothing, There’s two different totally parenting styles, two different totally everythings. Which is a shame, because it affects me, but it really affects my children,” he said.
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