Being very smart, but still getting stuck in school. Lizanne van Deelen (19) from Mierlo is highly gifted but has great difficulty with keys. She tells her story to help other young people. “I felt very lonely.”
Lizanne sits beaming at the kitchen table, but after a few words about her primary school days she starts to cry. “I had little contact with others, they had a completely different level of thinking. You don’t feel normal and alone.”
High school also costs her a lot of energy. “I was very tired. I slept badly and often only went half days.” She will pass the first and second year of pre-university education. “After that I’m too exhausted to go to school. I start three times at the beginning of the school year, but every time I have to stop after a few weeks because I can’t handle it.”
She finds little support and understanding among peers. “I have burst into tears many times. Others didn’t understand what I was doing.” Her mother Tanja adds: “She has lost many friends.” Home schooling is also not the solution. “I felt a lot of pressure with tests,” she explains.
What exactly is it about? “I don’t know”, Lizanne closes quickly. Her mother adds: “She wants to do everything perfectly and sets the bar very high.” She gives an example of a multiple choice test. “Now ask yourself: is this green or yellow? Then she wouldn’t tick anything, because it’s light yellow. That was not listed as an option, there is no nuance in it.” According to her mother, it requires more knowledge in schools.
It was only a year and a half ago that it became clear: Lizanne is highly gifted and highly sensitive. “We have been to twenty doctors,” her mother describes the search. Now she is supported by Spirare, a foundation that works for the gifted. According to the foundation, 15,000 young people in the Netherlands are at home because education does not match. “We even see gifted people who end up in special education,” says Ben Vriends, of the foundation.
How is she now? “With ups and downs,” she says honestly. After a considerable period of rest, she wanted to start HAVO in May. “The book package had arrived, but it was already causing so much pressure,” her mother says. So they pulled the plug.
As difficult as Lizanne finds it difficult to talk about it, she thinks it is important to tell her story and thus help other young people. Especially in the week of loneliness, which is this week. “I want more attention for it. It was a very long search for me.”
And she also wants to help others in her future job. She dreams of a job as a primary school teacher in the lower years. Her eyes start to twinkle: “I enjoy teaching children. That gives me so much energy.”
She will soon start an internship at a primary school to see how she likes it. And she knows how to turn her struggle into something beautiful. “I will keep a close eye on how the children are doing. Even when they say it’s going well,” she says, beaming and proud.