Jenelle Evans Addresses Son Jace's Runaway Attempts, Says He's Been 'Having a Hard Time' for Years

The former Teen Mom star gave some insight into what she claims is really going on at home, after she was criticized for posting videos from a trip to California amid her family's recent issues. Taking to TikTok, she specifically responded to someone who wrote, "take care of your kids instead of running away to cali tf."

She first defended the West Coast trip, saying it "was planned months ahead of time" for work and it had nothing to do with "the incident that happened with my son." In case you missed it, Jace was reported as a runaway on August 15, before being located safe; at the time Jenelle said he took off after she took his phone away from him. He was reported missing again this week, but was located shortly after at a nearby gas station.

"A lot of my son's actions is being pinned against me and I'm getting a lot of hate, a lot of comments and it keeps going and going and going," said Evans in the video. "My son has been having a hard time for the past two, three years. None of this has gone public because we're trying to keep his privacy."

"Me and my mom, when she gave me custody, she's like, 'We're just getting along, I'm going to give Jenelle back [custody of her son],' well there was a big reason behind why I got him back," she continued, referring to her mom Barbara's decision to revert custody back to her earlier this year. Barbara previously had custody of the child, dating back to 2010, shortly after his birth; Jenelle was just 17 at the time.

"For reasons we're not going to discuss because, like I said, it's my son's privacy. But I will say one thing, monitor your kids phones," she continued. "If they're teenagers, they're on apps, they're on Snapchat, Snapchat's a bad one."

"I monitor my kids' phone and sometimes they get in trouble, sometimes they needed it taken away for the consequences of their actions, right?" added Jenelle. "But sometimes they don't take that too lightly and sometimes kids get really mad about their phones if you take them away. It's kind of like an addiction to them because they're so attached to it."

She went on to say that her son is "fine," "healthy" and "safe" now. She added she won't be getting into more specifics to protect, before then asking for privacy.

When Jace first ran off earlier this month, Jenelle told TMZ that he did it because they took his phone away after he got in trouble at school.

"Jace is a good kid and we're not dealing with anything that most families don't deal with while raising children," she said at the time. "This has absolutely nothing to do with my situation with David, we do not argue in front of our children or fight in front of our kids. This is a teenage boy being a teenager mad that we decided to take his phone away."

Evans has been going through marriage issues with husband David Eason, with whom she shares daughter Ensley. Jenelle is also mom to son Kaiser, her son with ex Nathan Griffin, while Jace's father is ex Andrew Lewis.