Fridge Horror
- At five years old, Carly is developing a split personality (named Darla). If something isn't done to stop this, just imagine what she'll be like when she's older...
- Some of the commonly recorded cases of dissociative disorders tended to stem from some kind of childhood trauma or abuse and the symptoms tend to start out in childhood. Carly's a textbook case of this, with "Darla" being her way of coping with being forced by her mother to do pageants.
- Sammi-Jo's mother is now divorced because her husband was justifiably upset that over $100,000 had been spent in relation to pageants. How many other, non-recurring girls may have had to deal with that sort of thing? Probably many more.
- The very idea that people like the worst of the Stage Moms actually exist.
- The possibility that mothers loading their daughters on Pixy Stix before the pageants will lead to the kids taking up drug habits in later life.
- The fact that children at this age are incredibly impressionable and are witnessing adults - their own parents - using threats, tantrums, lies, and many other underhanded methods to achieve very petty goals. In essence, these children are directly being taught that this kind of behavior is not only perfectly okay, it's also much more effective. This is especially worrying because none of this is staged (so to speak), so these children really are getting the message that if you want something, even a little bit, throw tantrums and death threats around like pillows until you get it. The fact that the show itself blatantly rewards this doesn't help at all.
- Many of these parents would fall under the "abusive parent" label, everything is recorded and televised, and yet as far as we know the police are never contacted or see the madness themselves and do anything to fix the situation.
