Dance Moms was released in July 2011, and with eight seasons, it ran all the way to September 2019.

Though the show makes for a very entertaining reality show, people seem to forget the reality part. This was these girls real children so one question stands out: why in the world would parents trust children with Abby Lee Miller?

Dance Moms was a reality tv show about the Abby Lee Dance Company and the young dancers along with their mothers. As Nina Sioux (on the show from seasons 1-7) said on her YouTube channel in 2018, Dance Moms was only supposed to be a six week-long thing.

Once the show blew up, the whole country got to see the craziness within the Abby Lee Dance Company.

Right off the bat, you’re exposed to Miller making girls ages six to thirteen cry, frequently. And for those who thought this was all an act for television, think again.

The kids’ tears were real, and so was Miller’s emotional abuse.

On season two episode four, Miller said that Chloe Lukasiak (season 1-4 and 7), after messing up her dance several times,“Doesn’t have a brain in her head.”

Lukasiak also had said her reason for leaving Dance Moms so abruptly at the end of season four was because Abby had made fun of Lukasiak’s medical condition.

“I heard everything she said and they didn’t show it on Dance Moms and it’s not really said a lot, but she made fun of me,” Lukasiak said.

Camryn Bridges (season 7) said in a YouTube video that her time on Dance Moms affected her mental health.

“She said my feet were weird because the top of them were brown and the bottom were white,” Bridges said.

Bridges goes on to say how she was depressed after leaving the show and had to go to therapy.

She also explained how Miller was nice to her when the cameras were off but treated her horribly when they were rolling.

“She would say, ‘You suck, you’re terrible, your feet are absolutely horrible,’” Bridges said.

Unfortunately, Bridges wasn’t the only one who suffered mental health problems from Miller. Lilliana Ketchman (season 6-8) mentioned in a Q&A on her YouTube channel how being on Dance Moms made her depressed. Ketchman also mentioned that the stress level was a hundred out of ten.

In an interview, Lukasiak said she thought that that much stress and being that busy was normal for a nine-year-old.

“I’d cry in school because I was so tired,” Lukasiak said.

The amount of pressure and emotional mistreatment put on such young girls has clearly taken its tole. In fact when Paige Hyland (seasons 1-4) was thirteen, she tried to sue Miller.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Miller was arrested and charged with 20 counts of fraud.  Abby was hiding more than $755,000 in earnings from doing Dance Moms. 

Miller’s mistreatment of all the girls, along with her being a criminal, really raises the question “why anyone would choose to have their children around her?”