Jon Gosselin is hoping his son Collin Gosselin can make amends with his estranged siblings.
“Collin will hopefully repair that,” Jon said of his son, who has not spoken to his brothers and sisters since 2016, in an interview with Us Weekly published Wednesday.
“It’s a two way street. You know what I mean? He’s offered the olive branch, so hopefully the olive branch will be returned.”
Of the eight children Jon shares with ex-wife Kate, only Colin and daughter Hannah chose to live with him. Aaden, Leah, Joel, Alexis and twins Mady and Cara decided to live with their mom, following the reality TV couple’s highly publicized split.
During his interview, Jon further admitted that Hannah still talks to all of her siblings and he hopes the same might be true for himself one day.
“Every time I’m in New York or whatever, I reach out and try to get some stimulation from my twins or whatever,” he told Us. “Maybe one day it’ll just happen, but we’ll see. We talk about it a lot. Holidays are coming and maybe that’ll happen.”
Collin first revealed he hasn’t spoken to his siblings in several years in 2023 during an appearance on Vice TV’s episode of the “Dark Side of the 2000s,” titled “Jon & Kate: Family Circus.”
The former aspiring Marine blamed his mother for the estrangement, claiming Kate “kind of drove a social barrier between us” after Collin accused her of abuse by sending him to a mental institution in 2016. He was 12 years old at the time of his treatment.
“She told them the story one way, and, obviously, I see the story a different way.”
In 2018, Collin, while institutionalized, reached out to his father in a letter, begging his dad to have him released from the Fairmount Behavioral Health Institute in Philadelphia, where he was staying.
Jon then sought full custody of their son, which led to a rift in the family. As a result, the rest of Hannah and Collin’s siblings chose to sever ties with their brother.
“They don’t talk to Collin,” Hannah confirmed in the Vice doc. “They decided to not have a relationship with him.”
Around the time of Collin’s admission, Kate told media outlets she sent Collin to an institution because he was prone to “unpredictable and violent behavior.”
The mom went on to allege that Collin would regularly attack her ex-husband Jon, their daughter Hannah, as well as “others around him.”
“All measures that were taken in our home were at the explicit recommendation of his pediatric psychiatrist and/or his team of specialists and were put into place to safeguard every member of our family, our friends as well as our family pets,” she claimed.