KATE GOSSELIN: HOW SHE FOOLED THE WORLD - THE RISE AND FALL OF A REALITY TV QUEEN (44 page)

September 2006

Again, at nap time Kate heard a thud and she knew what it was. This time Joel had climbed out of his crib!!! Kate let him go for a little while until she heard him getting into drawers. That’s when she went up and spanked him and put him back in his crib. Kate yelled at him that she’s serious and she will not tolerate crib climbing!!!!! She hopes he got the message but she can’t be sure because of his glazy stare when she talks.

But then, in an entry a month later, Kate wrote this:

October 2006

Kate said
apparently at nap time, the girls have a ‘new thing.’ Hannah and Leah like to climb up the outside of the boys’ cribs and kiss them!!!! Kate says it is sooooooo cute and she let’s them do it.

January 2007

Kate likes crib climbing so much now that she alerted the film crew to set up a camera in the nursery to catch the climbers.

So for filming, crib climbing is happily cheered and celebrated.

Crib climbing is “sooooooo cute” when the girls do it.

Sometimes, though, crib climbing will get you spanked and punished.

Two-year-olds in diapers should be able to figure that out, right? It’s no wonder Joel has a “glazy look in his eyes” when Kate talks.

This is not a circumstance that can be excused away by saying that Kate doesn’t understand child development (even though most of the time she doesn’t). Kate fully understands that they’re only 2 though, and should act like 2-year-olds. In the “Sextuplets Turn 3!” episode of
Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht
, Mady yanks a doll out of the hands of one of the little girls and Kate yells at Mady and tells her to give it back. Mady yells at Kate and says this about the little girl: “She’s mean.” Kate tells Mady, “No, she’s not mean. She’s two!”

It sounds like Kate does understand age-appropriate behavior on some level, so why the spankings for equally age-appropriate behavior in crib climbing? Spanking a 2-year-old child in diapers for climbing into and out of a crib, especially after praising the child previously for the exact same thing, is just sick.

“The struggles that we face are being consistent.

Because discipline for us is about a 24 hour a day job.”

– Kate Gosselin

POTTY TRAINING

It’s been very well documented that Jon and Kate allowed the television cameras and the world to watch their children being potty trained on several episodes of their reality show. The kids were shown partially naked and sitting on the potty countless times throughout the Season 3 episodes. At one point, the boys were sitting on their potty chairs outside in the driveway, because “boys are messy,” according to Kate. There is so much dignity in that.

One potty training event in particular bothered me greatly. It happened, once again, to poor little Collin. He was trying to go to the potty, and Kate left him sitting in a room by himself. Well, he was by himself except for the strange man who was pointing a video camera at him. For the viewing audience, Kate and the crew had a timer on him, to further the humiliation. After more than 30 minutes of Collin sitting, trying to go potty, Kate turns the light out on Collin, leaving him alone to sit in the dark on the potty, and telling him, “Don’t get up ’til there’s pee in there. Understand?”

Then Kate passive-aggressively taunts Collin by singing “Aaden’s a big boy, Aaden’s a big boy!” because he managed to pee in the potty.

Aaden peed in the potty because he was scared to death to not pee in the potty, Kate.

Kate’s reward to the kids for peeing in the potty is one mini M&M.

That’s right. One. Mini. M&M.

For pooping in the potty, the children were rewarded with two MINI M&Ms.

KATE JUSTIFIES HER APPEARANCE AS AN

EXAMPLE TO HER KIDS

In Kate’s book,
I Just Want You To Know
, Kate talks of how her mommy transformation played out very publicly and tells us that it’s important that mothers not lose track of who they are. She goes on to say that looking nice sets a good example for our kids. Kate says that looking nice improves self-confidence, which she can pass along to her daughters.

This sounds surprisingly logical, but Kate’s words do not fit the reality of her actions. The reality is that through her actions and words, Kate is passing along a dangerous message to her five beautiful, impressionable daughters that how they look naturally isn’t good enough. She is modeling the unhealthy example that the only way they can feel good about themselves is with fake breasts (I know she got breast augmentation because I’ve seen the paperwork from the doctor), Botox treatments, fake tan, fake teeth, hair extensions, fake nails and tinted contact lenses.

Instead of teaching her daughters to be proud of who they are, and not to be consumed by false images of what they “should” look like, she is setting them up for some potential body image issues.

QUEEN BEE

During the “Twins In Charge” episode of
Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht
, Kate yells at Jon, “It’s not all about you all the time!” Kate then says to the camera, “Man, he makes me mad.”

Then, rather than play with her children, she moans about the clutter, saying, “Someday I’ll have a house that we fit in. I don’t know what size that is gonna be, but I know we don’t fit here.”

Jon, having had enough, yells “Who cares Kate? Just shut your mouth and stop cleaning and play!”

And Kate responds, “I can’t play before the work is done.”

Jon fires back, “You don’t play with your kids!!!”

And Kate answers with, “You’re right. I’m busy doing your work.”

Jon says, “You’re busy sitting in a chair!”

Mady finally chimes in, telling the camera, “Mommy’s making lunch. She just sat in the chair and gave orders to daddy. That’s really all she did. She’s like queen bee.”

Indeed, Mady. Indeed.

DISGUSTING, DIRTY BOYS

The Gosselin boys are afraid of Kate. Actually, they’re scared to death of what she might do to them for breaking one of her biggest rules…getting dirty. I’ve seen it in how they act when they’re outside. I’ve heard it from them. And I’ve seen it very subtly many times during the
Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht
episodes. The boys are afraid of their mother, and they are afraid to get dirty.

It is just so sad to see little boys afraid of getting dirty because they have been threatened with punishment by their mother.

In the Season 4 episode of
Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht
called “Boys Day Out,” Kate says, “Boys, they’re just dirty. I’m telling you boys are just dirt, they’re just dirty!”

Poor little Aaden is seen scratching his behind, like any male of any species does on occasion, and Kate berates him by saying, “It’s disgusting Aaden.” She also goes on to tell Aaden, “You’re nails are horrendous child.”

Then she tells us, “They can be boys but why do they have to be dirty?”

BECAUSE THEY’RE BOYS, KATE! READ A PARENTING BOOK!

Kate says: “The girls are definitely more verbal. Girls have feelings and emotions and outbursts.”

So she is basically stating outright that boys don’t have feelings or emotions.

Here’s where a trained eye picked up on the problem though.

At the golf course during the episode, the boys are sitting in the golf cart and Collin says angrily and nervously to Joel: “Stop it Joel, you’re getting me dirty! You’re getting me dirty Joel!”

And Jon says to Collin: “Stop. Who cares? Look everyone’s dirty. Calm down. I don’t care. Your mother has got you brain-warped, thinking you have to be a clean boy all the time. Who cares? I don’t.”

Jon sure wins that parenting battle, and this was years ago.

The Gosselin boys have lived their whole lives without knowing the joys of crawling around in the dirt playing with Tonka trucks or making mud pies or sliding into home plate or rolling down a grassy hill and getting grass stains and not having a care in the world…because Kate tells them they can’t. Even worse, she spanks them and screams at them if they get their clothes dirty.

BUSTED AT THE BUS STOP