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Mom-of-eight Kate Gosselin covers the latest issue of PEOPLE and opens up about enrolling her 12-year-old son Collin in a program away from home.

“Collin has special needs,” Kate shares. “[There’s] a fairly fluid diagnosis of what those needs are, but he needs to learn certain strategies to help him deal with things.”

Posing with seven of her children on the mag’s cover – Collin’s sextuplet sibs Alexis, Leah, Hannah, Joel and Aaden and 15-year-old twins Mady and Cara – Kate says her son has been struggling for years.

“This has been a struggle we’ve had for a very long time, and it’s one I’ve dealt with on my own,” she says. “I’ve felt very alone in this. By the same token, it’s not something that has only impacted me or him – our entire family has been impacted.”

Kate says Collin is currently “enrolled in a program that is helping him learn the skills he needs to be the best him he can be.”

She adds: “We miss him so much, so it’s been hard because there is a huge hole in our family without him here. But it comforts us to know he’s where he needs to be right now, and I can feel good about that.”

But she made the tough decision for her son’s future.

“When your kids go to college, do you miss them? Yes, but you reassure yourself that they are getting so much out of it,” she says. “And that’s the same sort of investment I feel like I’ve made Collin’s future.”

Although she has “no regrets,” looking back, the mom-of-eight, 41, has gained some parenting insight.

“If I could go back, I wouldn’t spend so much time worrying about the messes and the obsessive compulsiveness and needing to be so in control,” she shares. “I would spend more time nibbling little feet and cuddling up. I worried about so many things I just didn’t need to be worrying about when they were still so young, and I came on way too strong. I should have just rolled around on the floor some. I wouldn’t have melted down as much.”

She adds: “When you’re younger, you may have more energy, but when you’re older, you’re wiser. We’ve been through so much, from the divorce to issues with Collin, and now I see that the other things I thought were important are just not.”