Jon Gosselin has been in contact with his son Collin Gosselin after the teenager enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps earlier this year.
“I got some letters from him from boot camp, from Parris Island,” Jon, 46, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published on Tuesday, August 22. “He’s doing super well, he just talks about, like, training. He said he doesn’t really have time to do anything [else].”
Jon gushed about Collin, 19, calling him “super independent” after living “on his own a little bit during high school.” The Jon and Kate Plus 8 alum explained that his son “enlisted at 18 and he left when he was 19,” which Jon said “taught him to grow up a lot faster.”
Jon shares twins Mady and Cara, 22, and sextuplets Collin, Hannah, Alexis, Aaden, Leah and Joel, 19, with his ex-wife, Kate Gosselin. Following his divorce in 2009, Kate, 48, was initially granted full custody of all eight kids. Jon claimed earlier this month that his ex-wife then “segregated” him from his family.
“It was Kate and the kids and that was it,” he told The U.S. Sun on August 1, alleging, “She doesn’t talk to her own family, so she tried to segregate me from mine until I woke up one day.”
Despite living apart from his children for years, Jon has been a hands-on dad with both Collin and Hannah, who came to live with him in 2018. Collin’s decision to move in with Jon came two years after Kate had him institutionalized.
Collin accused his mother of being “abusive” on a July episode of Vice’s Dark Side of the 2000s series. He claimed that his mom sent him to the Fairmont Behavioral Health Institute in 2016 so no one would “catch wind” of her allegedly abusive actions toward him.
Hannah recalled in the documentary that Collin was “separated” from her and the rest of their siblings before he was sent away to deal with his “special needs.”
Kate denied the claims in a July 21 statement, claiming that Collin “has received multiple psychiatric diagnoses.” His alleged “many attacks/outbursts” led Kate to admit Collin to the treatment facility.
She insisted that she still loves Collin with “all [her] heart,” but maintained that he is “a very troubled young man who continues to need a lot of help.”
That same day, Jon clapped back at his ex-wife’s statement, telling The U.S. Sun that Kate’s remarks were “false” regarding Collin. “True love for a child wouldn’t include a mother attacking their son to the public,” Jon added. “Do not forget that a judge awarded sole legal and physical custody of Collin to his father.”
Ahead of the family’s docuseries drama, Collin revealed that he planned to enlist in the military after graduating from high school. “[I will] hopefully [be] in the Marine Corps, exploring my interest in acting, and, you know, I do want to open my own business,” Collin said of his five-year plan during a November 2022 interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I’m interested in just the fact you can make your own schedule and be your own boss. I love that.”
