Thanka2, there's a big difference between labelling a child 'gifted' and recognising someone's profession - teacher in the case you give or medical condition (or what have you, in the case of austism). But i do agree with the rest of your post.
I really believe that most of us live up to the labels our parents attach to us and when we are older, to the labels we attach ourselves. Call it a self-fulfilling prophesy if you want. If someone tells you often enough that you are lazy or stupid you will believe it and become it.
And nowadays there is a lot of talk (as someone else mentioned) about how to heap praise on a child. The outcome of doing it the wrong way (i.e. saying, you are amazing, you are strong, you are smart) is that we raise children who think they are better than everyone else and therefore find it hard to get ahead professionally (not to mention socially) because they are not prepared to start at the bottom and work their way up. It's a balancing act.
Wouldn't say I'm really disagreeing with you. The example I gave wasn't a very good one. What I meant is that, if you do have tests done and they do show accurately what's going on with your child, that knowledge, whether it reveals a good or not-so-good situation, can be powerful and important and well, empowering.
Of course, the generation I grew up in was really the first generation where education became child-centered and just an overall shift in the value of children took place. So, the Baby Boomers, many after growing up in homes where children were meant to be "seen and not heard" (this was a common phrase my grandparents used with my mom and her siblings), decided that their children were going to grow up with a good does of self-esteem. Self-esteem really was the buzz word of my generation. At school there were all these self-esteem boosting programs. And, well, the saying "too much of a good thing" (or in this case, a good thing, not presented in the best way) can have consequences too. So, in turn there has been a huge increase in narcissism in my generation. People my age can tend to have thin skins when it comes to criticism and expect to walk into any job and be hired just because "hey, I'm me and I'm wonderful" because for all of their educational life they were fed these praise statements. And then when we get let down, we really can't understand why. Of course, so much of this is just ingrained so that it's on an unconscious level.
So, the order of events nowadays is to correct the missteps of the educators who really pioneered the value of of children movement (it probably has a more accurate name to define that period of time). And part of that is getting away from giving out sweeping and unclear rewarding statements like, "You're awesome" but instead give direct assessment "I really liked the way you played in the game." It all makes a lot of sense.
Still, at the end of the day, if your child scores highly on educational assessments and shows all the signs of being ahead, not only academically (verbally, in maths etc.) but also socially (being able to share when most of his/her peers are going through the "stingy" phase) then most parents would say to themselves (although, maybe not to others) "My child is ahead." And in the past, the term (which, apparently must be not politically correct anymore) for a child who was ahead developmentally was "gifted." Maybe there needs to be a new term coined.
