1

Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times


4/1/2014
Effect of Child Abuse
When I first met Stephane, he said that he was from Ghana. He reminded me of a
Ghanian friend from back home named William. I told him that I knew he was Ghanian,
Stephane asked, What made you say that? I was like, You remind me of a friend from back
home named William. He was like, What about William is like me? To be honest, I told
Stephane that it was something in his build, something about him was formal, like William,
something was educated and respectable. After back-and-forth questioning and basic
conversation, Stephane came to the inevitable confusion as to why my age didnt quite match the
grade I was in school. At this point, I had to explain to him that I was not born in the United
States. I was born in Vlora, Albania. My parents moved my family to the United States when I
was six years old. I spent a large portion of my childhood traveling between the United States
and Europe. My parents moved us back to Albania where I completed 8
th
grade in Europe, then
came back to the United States. We currently live in Rochester, N.Y.





2
Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times




For five years the Wixom School District, in Michigan, was all I knew. Shiny halls,
glass-walled offices, decorated classrooms, toys, markers, and colors everywhere, is what makes
up most of my memory of my time at Wixom Elementary School. My teachers were angelic.
They used nothing but soft and polite voices with their students. I dont remember a teacher raise
their voice in an angry manner, let alone put their hands on a child. This is not the case
everywhere else in the world.
August 2007, I was in Vlora, Albania. My parents moved my sister and I to Vlora, for a
year, because they believed we were too out-of-touch with our Albanian roots. They enrolled
us in Shkolla Private Aulona (Private School Aulona) which was just a few blocks away from
our house. Fast forward to September 7
th
, 2007. This was my first day of school in a foreign
country. That morning ended up being my first, and biggest culture shock in Albania. I walked
into the school, the halls were snow white with no decorations like recently abandon hospital.
As I entered my classroom, the theme continued with the students in perfectly ironed uniforms
with small unisex red or blue ties. The girls had no make-up, no nail polish the boys were clean
cut. There were three columns, and five rows of long desks and bench-like seats that sat two
students in each bench. The wall had no dcor, no poster, nothing; the only object besides the
desks was a simple blackboard. I sat down without saying a word, patiently waiting for the
professor. In Albania, educators in the elementary level were called teachers, educators in middle
and high school were called professors. When the professor entered the classroom I begin to hear
3
Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times


shuffling and chairs squeaking, I was confused. The whole class raised to their feet, put both
hands on the desk and all-together chanted Good morning Professor -this was as sign of
respect and was done every-time a professor entered the classroom. Students would also raise
their hand, then stand up in-front of their desk when they were called on. The school wasnt as
strict as it was disciplinary. The end of September, at Private School Aulona, brought on an
incident that will always remain clear in my memory. I was in my Social Studies class with
Professor Linda. She asks a question and notices that Mario, in the first-row left corner of the
room, is turned around and not paying attention. She calls on Mario to answer the question.
Mario turns to face the professor, begins to laugh and says he didnt hear what she said. With
anger the professor goes to the chalk board, picks up a ruler then walks back over to Mario.
Professor Linda raises the ruler, slams it on Marios head and breaks the ruler into two pieces.
Anger and rage quickly filled my whole being. I had never seen anything like this. Having been
previously taught by teachers in the United States and never having witnessed such barbaric
methods by an educator; I was furious. A little girl in 8
th
grade was sitting in her desk feeling
enraged, but at the same time helpless because I did not know how to act or what to say.

4
Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times


Children at Private School Aulona, in Albania, need be treated with love and constant
positive encouragment as opposed to physical and mental abuse that can foster detrimental
problems later on in life.





The most common problems caused by mental and physical
abuse on
5
Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times


children include depression, anti-socialism, self-mutiliation, anger management, and unfortunetly
suicide. These indications of posttraumetic stress can further infiltrate an inncocent youths life
and cause social problems such as gang memberships, highschool drop-outs, teenage pregnancys,
problems with the law, drug use, etc. The main reason these problems exist is because, just like
babies go through develpomental phases, children are also delicate individual who are constantly
progressing through crucial psychological and phsyical stages in life. The expereinces we have
when we are younger tend to mold our personailities as we mature. A preteen who is going
through important develpmental phases may already be a confused about the world and unsure
about themselves. Abuse of any kind will eventually add stress and could potentially cause an
individual to reach their breaking point which can in-turn cause them to attain bad habits. It is
crucial that we raise our young with care, teaching them values of love and respect, while
instilling confidence. Child maltreatment can pave the way for a rocky road in the minors life.
In recent work, Professor Edlira Haxhymeri emphasizes that violence tends to happen in
regions of low socioeconmic levels. The children come from low income families who have
problems such as their parents are divorced, remarried, with social, mental, personailty problems
etc.
1
Education is another key perponent in families with history of abuse.

According to
Professor Edlira Haxhymeris study, only 9 percent of the mothers of the children who were
abused had received education up to University. In most cases, most fathers in Professor
Haxhymeris study were unemployed.
1
This caused them to lose their stance of authority and as
head of the family. To maintain some control, the fathers behave dangerously and became the
main source of many phsyical and mental forms of abuse. This translates to the classroom
because the children form characters of a closed nature that suffer within and accept abuse not
6
Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times


only at home, but also in a school setting. Three-fifths of the children who had expereinced
physical abuse in an educational setting had not confined to their garduians at home due to the
fact that they had also been exposed to some form of maltreatment at home.
1
This problem is
sustained by lack of police authority in second world countries such as Albania. This problem is
also sustained by natural cycle that begins when the abused individual deals with hurt in a
negative way. The abused loses confidence in themselves, then begin to be either anti-social or
begins to develop anger problems that cause them to rebel. These habits inevitably lead the
abused to become the abuser, simply because this is all they have known their whole lives and
have not found a way to productivly cope with their pain.
The research led by Dr. Michael Meany at McGill University, published in The New York
Times highights the changes in human brains after abuse. Children who had delt with abuse or
were neglected run a high risk of developing mental problems such as depression, substance
absue, anxiety and suicide. From a biological perspective the study proved that mothers who
were affectionate towards their offspring altered expressions in certain genes that dampaned their
physiological response to stress, therefor handing stress better.
2
According to Dr. Meany These
biological buffers are passed on to the next generation.
2
There was also a correleation between
the primates who were able to cope with stress and the ones who were more nurturing to their
offsprings. The offsprings who werent nurtured by their mothers had a difficult time dealing with
stress. The researchers found that a gene that inhibits stress receptors was 40 percent less active
in offsprings that were abused as children.
2
In addition to how abuse harms the brain
scientifically, the abuse is sustained because after a while the children exposed to abuse begin to
think its the norm and begin to build a pseudo immunity towards it. They continue to deal with
7
Paula Hyskaj
1. Dr.Edlira Haxhymeri, Eliona Kulluri, Altin Hazizaj Albanian Family IRCCRA 6, no 16 (2005).

2. Benedict Carey. (2009, February 23). After Abuse, Changes in the Brain. The New York Times


the abuse because they think its a part of their normall daily lives. This effects them in the
future because they become less confident. They do not learn how to stick up for themselves and
have a blurry understanign of whats right and what is wrong.
Here Stephane was, telling me its good to be hard on children because according to him,
Its good to be raised like that because those people turn out and realize that way of uprining is
good later on in life. The only thing I could do was shake my head. Try telling a little child,
who is constantly being put down, contantly being abused, beaten, morally torn apaprt that all of
it will be worth while in the end, and good for them. How do you say that? How do you
rationalize picking apart an innocent soul? They are our future. Our little flowers. Our flowers
that need warmth of the sun, tending by a delicate hand, and nurture of pure water. What would
our earth be without floweres?