DISCIPLINE OR ABUSE???

If pain is love, why does it break us instead of build us?

Growing up, I thank God my dad was never an iron-fisted man. He would discipline; he would correct, but he rarely crossed the line into abuse in the name of discipline.

But I also saw people who weren’t like that.

There was this man, an Arsenal fan. Maybe that’s even part of why I don’t care much for football today. Some fans are too invested and too emotionally attached, and when things don’t go their way, they spill that frustration onto everyone around them.

Whenever Arsenal lost, this man came home angry. He had three kids, and no matter how minor their mistakes were, he would flog the first and second born just to vent. It got so bad that he once slapped his two-year-old son simply for being a normal child.

Football didn’t make him an abuser, but it became the outlet for his beastly attitude. Abuse was already in him.

And here’s the truth: abuse is not discipline. Most times, when you inflict pain on children, they don’t learn. You don’t teach them right from wrong; you only teach them fear. They stop out of fear of being beaten, not because they’ve truly understood. And when the fear fades, the behaviour returns. Or worse, the child hardens until even the beating no longer matters.

And abuse isn’t only physical. Parents often use other forms: verbal, psychological, and emotional. Words that cut deeper than any cane:

“I wish I never gave birth to you.”

“You’ll never amount to anything.”

“Look at your mates.”

Scars from words like these last long after the sting of flogging fades. Yet they’re justified as “guidance”. As if breaking a child’s spirit is the same as leading them right. But that’s not correction; that’s damage.

They say they love you because they “know what’s best”. They say discipline is provision, that outside it’s never better. But in so many households, cultures, and institutions, there’s a very fine line between love and abuse, and too often, that line gets blurred on purpose.

If the discipline is so loving, why does it leave the receiver in pain? Parents say, “It hurts me more to love you this way,” but when you strike in anger, is that really love? Or is it simply rage disguised as care? You say you have the right to discipline a child, but at what point does discipline stop shaping and start destroying?

The defence is always the same: “That’s just how it’s done.” But “how it’s done” is not the same as “what’s right”. When pain is normalised as tradition, it gets passed down like an heirloom, with hurt treated as inheritance. Culture cosigns it, institutions endorse it, and silence protects it.

So punishment gets rebranded as protection. Control gets renamed care. Abuse gets wrapped in the language of sacrifice, making it almost impossible to distinguish love from harm. Because if everyone around you insists it’s love, how do you know any different?

It reminds me of a scene from Juvenile Justice, where a father beat his daughter and defended it by saying he had the right to “discipline” her because he was her father. Even when confronted with photographs of her injuries, he refused to see it as abuse. To him, his authority outweighed the damage. But what lingered wasn’t his justification; it was the daughter’s tears, silent evidence of pain that no “good intention” could erase.

That’s the danger: in exaggerated forms, we easily name it abuse. But in its quieter, “minor” forms—the slaps, the humiliation, the harsh words framed as correction—people hesitate to call it what it is.

Psychology backs it up. Even “low-level” harsh discipline, the “small slap”, and the “tough words” leave long-term effects. The American Psychological Association links corporal punishment to higher aggression, anxiety, and weaker parent-child relationships. What parents dismiss as “minor” discipline often accumulates into invisible scars that follow children into adulthood. And because kids are told, “This pain is love,” they grow up confused about what real love looks like, often tolerating harm in future relationships too.

Here’s the truth: love that cages is not love. Love that silence is not love. Love that wounds and then demands gratitude is not love. That’s abuse with prettier packaging.

And so we’re left with the hardest question: if love only hurts, if love only controls, if love only repeats cycles of pain, can we still call it love? Or is it simply abuse, rebranded and passed down because “that’s how it’s always been”?