Collin Gosselin has been estranged from many of his siblings for so long that he struggles to remember their faces and voices.
“I actually think about it a lot,” the Jon & Kate Plus 8 alum, 22, exclusively tells Us when asked whether he has considered reaching out to his brothers and sisters. “I think about sending a text and just reaching out and just asking how they’re doing. But … it’s just way more complicated than that.”
Collin, who speaks to Us while promoting his memoir, In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, adds that he and his estranged siblings “don’t know each other” because he “didn’t grow up with them.”
“I can’t remember what my siblings looked like,” he admits. “I can’t remember what they sound like. I can’t remember what they did look like or sound like back in the day. I mean, I can’t remember anything. It’s like I don’t know them. I don’t know what they like. I don’t know what they’re into nowadays, what their hobbies are and what they do in their free time. Like, there’s just so many simple things I just wish I knew. And I don’t know. But I have thought about it a lot. … We have so many things to talk about.”
Collin and his sextuplet siblings — Hannah, Aaden, Joel, Leah and Alexis — and older twin siblings Mady and Cara, 26, rose to fame on their family’s reality TV series, Jon & Kate Plus 8 (known as Kate Plus 8 after Jon, 49, and Kate, 51, divorced in 2009). The show aired on Discovery Health and TLC from 2007 to 2017.
Collin was institutionalized at Fairmount Behavioral Health System in Philadelphia when he was 12 years old. He spent two years at the psychiatric facility, during which time he claims he was visited once by his mother. Collin claims that Kate sent him away to silence him from speaking out about her alleged abuse. Kate has denied the allegations, claiming that her son was institutionalized due to dangerous behavioral issues.
“My son Collin, whom I love with all my heart, has received multiple psychiatric diagnoses over the years,” she said after Collin spoke out in a 2023 ViceTV interview. “For the safety of myself, his brothers and sisters and for his own well-being, he was placed in a facility following years of outpatient treatment which proved insufficient for his needs.”
Upon his release from the facility, Collin moved in with his father, who received sole legal and physical custody of his son. Collin’s sister Hannah also decided to move in with Jon, while the remaining siblings stayed with Kate.
Collin tells Us that the more he speaks out about his relationship with his mom, the more he may “non-directly be separating myself from my siblings.”
“Because obviously, they love her. They have a right to. And that’s our mother,” he explains. “But I have to choose the path that is advocating for others, especially after everything I lived [through] — I have to choose that path. And so I will never stop speaking my truth. … But it is the unfortunate fact that it has residual effects, and it pulls me and my siblings further apart.”
In the Shadow of Eight is available now.
