How to Choose a School for Your Young Gifted Child

You already know your child is ahead of agemates. How do you select the best school?

A big part of my consulting with parents of bright (possibly gifted) young children is to help them know how to look for the “best fit” environment for their children. We want our children to fit in and be comfortable. We want them to find others with whom to play, have a meaningful conversation, and to have teachers who seem to address the differing needs of their students regularly throughout each school day. After all, in schools that group children by age, the spread of abilities — intellectual and physical — in each class is generally large.

I encourage parents to set up an appointment for their child to try out the school in whatever way the school does that. Usually this calls for about a half day visit with the child being partnered up with another student while participating in the normal activities of that classroom.

You may wish to let the person in charge of setting up your visit know that the reason you want to see more than one classroom is that you know your own personality might click better with one teacher than another and it would be fairer to get a sampling rather than judge the school on only one teacher’s methods or behaviors. At the same time, if you think there’s a good chance you want to enroll your…