By Breaking Celebrity News Staff

Kate Gosselin’s parenting skills have been closely scrutinized since she put her eight children on television, but a shocking new claim details the extreme discipline they allegedly suffered at the hands of their mother.

“She was beating 2-year-old babies in diapers,” reporter Robert Hoffman, who claims he found secret journals that Kate used to help her write her books, Multiple Bles8ings and EightLittle Faces, told Star magazine.

According to Hoffman, the former Kate Plus 8 star kept detailed notes on her computer about using a wooden spoon to hit her children, yanking them around by their hair, and punishing them for transgressions as minor as trying to climb out of a crib or not adjusting to potty training quickly enough.

“I don’t judge somebody for spanking, but what Kate wrote in her journal is just absolute violence,” Hoffman tells Star exclusively.