'Dance Moms' alum Maddie Ziegler says her mom apologized for putting her on reality series as a child
foxnews.comFormer "Dance Moms" star Maddie Ziegler said her mom has apologized for putting her on the reality show at such a young age. "Last year, I was having a really bad panic attack and I called my mom and things were coming up from the past, and she apologized to me," Ziegler, 20, said on Emily Ratajkowski’s "Emrata" podcast Tuesday. "She was like, 'I'm so sorry I put you through that.' It's so sad because she would never want to hurt us, but none of us knew how crazy it would get." Ziegler said she started dancing competitively when she was just 4 years old and joined the Lifetime reality show about young dancers at Pittsburgh’s Abby Lee Dance Company when she was just 7.
Ziegler’s mom, Melissa Ziegler-Gisoni, "really did everything to try and break our contract," Ziegler added. She finally left the show after six seasons when she was 11 or 12 years old with the help of Sia, who Ziegler worked with for several years, dancing in her videos.
The 20-year-old said she has "blocked out so much of my childhood" from before she joined "Dance Moms," saying she doesn’t remember what her life was like before the reality series. "It’s weird to find out things that I did when I was younger on like TikTok," she said. "Like I’ll see people posting things on me, and I’ll be like I don’t even remember doing that." The "West Side Story" alum said she continues to struggle with the thought process instilled in her by her dance teacher when she was younger.
Ziegler recalled being taught that "you have to be the best. If you don’t win you’re not good." "And so that was like the mentality when I was little, and I was such a perfectionist and I was so hard on myself, and I’m trying to unlearn all those traits," she admitted.
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