Dance Moms

I am from Canada and started at 4 years old doing tap, jazz, and ballet until I 20.

I started with a small company where there was no body image issues or focused on. You could choose competitive, non competitive and with ballet I always had chances to move up grades with demonstrative exams.

I was in the Nutcracker ( I had to compete against a lot of girls throughout my province) and danced it for 6 years straight.

At 14, I was invited on full scholarships to the Royal Winnipeg in Canada too, a major ballet dance company. This school was intense but I was never demeaned or told I wasn't good enough

I left because of injury doing pointe ballet to my knee and retired at 20.

In my experience I have NEVER encountered all the negativity that gets spewed out this show. The adults are appalling and the teacher as well.

There will always be competition in the world of dance, but all my instructors would wear dance apparel and would actually do hands on teaching without pitting students against each other and constantly being yelled at.

Cool your heels lady, you're going break these young girls spirits and eventually they will lose their love of dance!

How can we as a society condone the behavior of one Abby Lee Miller? I get that dance is a tough profession and the directors are unforgiving, however, we must realize these young ladies are still STUDENTS! It is obvious that the producers want to exploit the fact that Abby Lee Miller is a dance instructor who does not know what she is doing and that the only talent she has is screaming at everyone and punishing her students if she hates their mothers. That's all this show is: PURE EXPLOITATION. It's obvious because let's face it, Collins Avenue, the producers of the show, are famous for creating exploitation television. Don't believe me Google "American Colony."

Dance Moms is a T.V. series about little girls, most of them between the ages of 9 to about 16 who want to dance. This appears to be a pageant show where little kids where makeup which is not acceptable for their ages. And there is way too much drama, conflicts, injuries and crying through out. I do not like watching a bunch of kids going through all this pressure.

What is wrong with these dance instructors? Do they hate kids? If they have such a short fuse with kids, why are they working with a whole bunch of kids? They shouldn't even have jobs for having such intolerance with these dancers. They should have learned about patience before they signed up for this job.

I would like to see Abby stop yelling and berating the girls and hating on the moms. I think I dislike the moms fighting as much as I dislike Abby's screaming. I don't remember the show being like this in the first season. Unless this is all really fake and just for the show, I can't see the moms putting up with their kids being treated like this. I don't get where this show is headed. I love to watch the girls dance, otherwise I would quit watching. I would also like to see the full dance instead of the camera showing the moms and whatever during the dance. Even a split screen would be OK, but I would like to see the entire dance.

Abby has pushed some of these girls emotions to the brink of breaking. Like with Chloe. How could someone even call a child WASHED UP and constantly berate the girl for things? She's always compared to Maddie and when Chloe beat Kendall i believe? instead of being happy for Chloe, Abby throws a hissy fit and called the girl washed up and even told Christi that her daughter SUCKED!! how DARE she? how could a human being do that!? instead of praising Chloe and being happy for her, she has to go and do that. i don't blame that girl one bit for having enough.I congratulate Christi for pulling Chloe out. enoughs enough with the verbal and emotional abuse because frankly thats what it appears to be from my perspective.

I would never subject my child to someone that teaches like that. each girl is amazing and talented. Abby just fails to point that out instead points out the more negative things and compares them to someone else entirely. but what Maddie doesn't realize is there is always someone better than she is out there. its just how the universe works. maybe Abby should try using some positive praise and not make these girls feel like crap.