Despite the ongoing conflict between Jon and Kate Gosselin, the father of eight has never given up on the idea of reconciling — with most of his children.
Hannah and Collin both made their way to him as soon as they could. But he remains estranged from the twins and from the remaining septuplets.
Now, all of the Gosselins are adults. And that means that they’re no longer quite as firmly under Kate’s thumb.
And there may be real hope that Jon can one day reconnect with the Kate-loyalists.
As we reported at the time, Hannah and Collin Gosselin were both able to leave Kate’s clutches and live with their father in their early teens.
Hannah actually made the journey first. Then, after Jon was able to extract him from the institution to which Kate had confined him, Collin joined them.
Collin dreamt of military service and began basic training this summer after his high school graduation. Most of the Gosselin kids are off to college — and the twins, of course, headed to college years ago.
According to The US Sun, an inside source spies hope on the horizon for Jon to be on speaking terms with more of his kids.
“Jon sees them in the future communicating with him,” the insider reported.
“It seems more real all the time,” the source then characterized.
According to the insider’s reiteration: “The chances are better now than they were before.”
And it all comes down to how much direct control Kate has over their lives.
“There is alleviated pressure,” the source reasoned.
“Now that they’re in their adulthood,” the insider then suggested, “they are expressing themselves as individuals.”
The source then said that they are doing so “more now than they could or would have been before.
We all know that Kate does not appear to handle dissent well. Many people focus upon her unpleasant temperament when it comes to adults, and forget that she is a deeply terrible mother who has inflicted lasting harm. Just ask Collin.
Simply put, his hope is that they can spend time thinking for themselves and processing their past.
Now, Jon absolutely let down his children in multiple ways. We don’t think that he’d dispute that.
But Kate’s tyrannical parenting style (genuinely, that’s phrasing it more nicely than she deserves) could take years — and perhaps a lot of therapy — for most of the kids to overcome.
It is possible that some of them will cut ties with both parents. And it is also possible that one or more will jump ship to Team Jon as life experience helps them see Kate for what she is.
What’s more likely, however, is that some — but not all — will have some level of dialogue with both parents.
No matter how toxic and terrible a bad parent is, sometimes children find it impossible to accept what they are — even in adulthood.
Truth be told, going no contact with one or both parents is hard. It’s sometimes the best choice that a person could make in their life, and it could even save someone’s life. But it’s hard.
And our society, our culture, makes it even harder.
We can only imagine the complex layers of trauma and coping mechanisms that the Gosselin kids have built up. With time, and therapy, perhaps they’ll be able to unpack what they went through and make their own choices. We wish them well.
Jon Gosselin Hopes to Reconcile with Adult Kids: Kate Can’t Control Them Anymore! was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.