I tried it both ways. During my visit to the first school, a private school that caters to gifted kids, I spent an entire hour with the admissions director without saying much about DS4 at all. I just found it terribly difficult to talk about his giftedness with a complete stranger at that point. However, when I visited our second option, the local public school, I'd been told in advance that I'd have about 15 minutes, so I felt like I had no choice but to lay my cards on the table. I basically walked in and said, "My son is working several years above his age level. How would you deal with that?" From there, the person I was meeting with launched into a mini lecture on how "acceleration leads to depression in middle school," telling me "It doesn't matter if your kid finds the solution to world peace if he can't communicate with people his own age." When I let her know that there is no problem with my son's social skills and politely challenged the depression comment with information from the scientific literature on acceleration, things quickly became heated and confrontational. In the end, I felt like I learned a lot more in the 15 minute visit than I did in the hour-long visit. Next time, I would be direct and up-front again.
