07/31/2025
If you tell a child that an abusive parent 'really does love them,' then how are you going to tell a teenager that abuse is not love?
You can't. Because by then, you've already taught them that love can look like control, sound like screaming, and feel like fear. You’ve conditioned them to normalize pain if it comes from someone who claims to care. So when they end up in toxic relationships later in life—ones filled with emotional manipulation, gaslighting, or even physical harm—they won’t always recognize it as wrong. Why? Because it feels familiar. Because that seed was planted early on, when you asked them to overlook harm in the name of love.
When a child is taught to excuse abuse simply because it comes from a parent, they grow up believing that love is supposed to hurt. They learn to tolerate mistreatment and call it loyalty. They silence their own pain to keep the peace. They second-guess their instincts because someone they trusted told them that “it wasn’t that bad.” So how can you expect them to suddenly understand, as a teen or adult, that abuse is unacceptable? You’ve already blurred that line for them.
It is not love when someone violates your trust, your body, your voice, or your spirit. Love doesn’t shame you, humiliate you, or use fear as a weapon. Real love protects. It uplifts. It makes you feel safe, not small.
If we want to raise emotionally healthy adults, we have to start by being honest with children. Stop telling them that abuse is love. Stop romanticizing suffering. Call harmful behavior what it is—so they can grow up knowing the difference between being loved and being controlled, between discipline and cruelty, between protection and possession.
Children deserve the truth. And healing begins when someone finally says, “What happened to you was not love.”
