Parenting 2.0′s International Backpack Free Friday’s public awareness campaign invites adults everywhere to stop and take a fresh look at children’s foundational health – their mandatory curriculum.  Are they well-rested? Hydrated? Fed? What is their stress level? How heavy is their backpack?

An August 2008 WebMd.com article stated that the AAOC (American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery) says a child shouldn’t carry a backpack that exceeds 15%-20% of their body weight.”  It further shared that “A reasonable recommendation is a 10% cutoff weight for bodyweight. This will help reduce the risk of injury related to falls and relieve pain that comes from wearing giant backpacks loaded with school supplies.” With 10% as the more conservative target, here’s a breakdown by body weight for measuring how much your child should be lugging around in his backpack:

Child’s Weight Backpack Weight

50 pounds         5 pounds

75 pounds          7.5 pounds

100 pounds         10 pounds

125 pounds         12.5 pounds

150 pounds         15 pounds

Backpacks, however, are merely the tip of the iceburg - the problem we can see. During classtime - and yes permit me to acknowledge we are speaking about the “fortunate” children on the planet if they are in classrooms - backpacks are typically on the backs of chairs or in lockers. This is when children’s greater suffering continues - suffering that stems from being dehydrated, tired, emotionally stressed and hungry. While initially less obvious, all of these are well-documented to negatively impact every aspect of human functioning.

In my prior role as director of an academic tutoring club, I was shocked at the condition of children arriving for paid tutoring sessions -many parents took better care of their cars. Where are our priorities? When will we focus attention on children’s readiness to learn rather than simply what they are learning? 

Students who falter in school are more likely to embrace lives of crime and end up incarcerated. With incarceration considerably more expensive than school, isn’t it worth every adult taking a broad lens to means for improving children’s odds of educational success?

As the mother of two (now adult) daughters I know well the demands facing those on the front lines raising humanity. Be they parents or teachers, the fact is, they’re busy. Criticsm and complaints don’t inspire human beings to higher performance, they hinder it. Parenting 2.o is committed to lifting the burden off children and schools by sharing the concept of Life Skills Report Cards year round and supporting parents in performing the most important job on earth. Backpack Free Friday is the day we draw broader public attention to our activism and link arms to be the Change the World awaits. Thank you for joining us by sharing news of Backpack Free Friday forward. 

As complexity increases so too do the challenges. When not properly respected and proactively addressed, family problems become societal problems. No one lives in isolation. If a neighbor’s child struggles and ends up committing a crime, your taxes will be utilized to prosecute that child.  Every adult – whether a parent or not – has a role in raising humanity.

Consequently, families today are attracting heightened press and societal attention. Bright lights do not only reveal the problems you seek to find, they expose issues long hidden. ”Do as your parents did unto you” and “Children learn what they live” are now revealed as the impossibly, impoverished educational paradigms they have been for decades. Institutions that previously processed human beings like so many crayons in a box – shunning those whose uniqueness challenged their constructs – are cracking.  Child abuse, molestation, poverty, human trafficking and starvation, can no longer be written off as “someone else’s problem”. 

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming. Helen Keller

All of this brings us to the one constant. Regardless ever changing cultural norms and composition, families are universal and remain a primary classroom for children. Their success around the planet is critical to all of us.  So thank goodness for the passionate ones, the courageous, the can-do, the caring - people like Rhonda Sciortino. Rhonda endured severe poverty and physical abuse as a child and today teaches others to “Succeed because of what you’ve been through.”

As Rhonda and others who have travelled the journey over centuries have learned - and modern work in neuroscience and trauma now confirm –  far from being “forever damaged”  human beings are only as limited as their educators. Life skills benefit from the same things as academics: wisdom of third party instructors optimistic of children’s success, practice over years, and appreciation that failure is an essential part of any learning process.  Children who take the harder classes in the mandatory curriculum of surviving and communing with others, and have exceptional teachers, end up becoming humanity’s curriculum scholars. 

Editor’s Note: This blog is dedicated to the Parenting 2.0 humanitarians that volunteered to serve as Thought Leaders for the Modern Family Panel at P20 Talks 2012: Rhonda Sciortino, Dr. Pilar Placone, Dr. Jeannine Zoppi, Jeff Everage and Diana Sterling. P20 Talks made history by gathering professionals across multiple professional fields and continents to illuminate Life Skills as distinct, foundational skill sets critical to thriving and teachable by third party educators. 

Poll any audience on the top five aggravations of parents and keeping clothing, school and sports supplies organized will most assuredly make the list.

Why? Because parents never learned how to be inspiring educators.

Learning organizational skills often falls under the instructional umbrella of behavior rather than education. This sets up the cycle where - instead of parents acknowledging they may in fact be unskilled themselves - they feign competency and then punish children for “misbehaving” when performance doesn’t match expectations.

Modern brain research has revealed that which fires together, wires together. When negative thoughts and emotions accompany a task,  stress hormones pour in and children’s mental and physical capacities decrease. Because these events happen simultaneously, they are more likely to repeat. In other words, parents might as well be teaching children how not to be organized when they lecture, discipline and punish.

Here’s the good news – Organization skills benefit from the same practices of every other skill:

1. Valuing the skill as important.
2. Embracing the wisdom of enthusiastic third party educators optimistic about success.
3. Appreciating that failure is a natural part of every learning curve.
4. Understanding proficiency comes by commitment and practice over months and years.
5. Knowing that a beginner is of no less “character” than an expert.

Parents around the planet spend hundreds – even thousands – of dollars each year for sports and music coaches, but rarely contemplate investing in an organizational coach. How transforming might it be for a teen who struggles keeping track of homework to be coached by an organizational expert instead of being berated by his parents or sent to a therapist? 

Who becomes an organizational expert? People like Mitzi Weinman. Why? Because they have compassion for those who find the learning curve challenging. They also know first-hand the value of instruction by a qualified coach and appreciate just how life-altering competency in critical life skills arenas – like organization – can be.

Editor’s Note: This blog is dedicated to the Parenting 2.0 humanitarians that volunteered to serve as Thought Leaders for the Organizational Panel at P20 Talks 2012: Mitzi Weinman, Dr. Shirin Sherkat, Deborah King, Sherlyn Pang Luedtke, Dr. Yvonne Sum and Roya Kravetz. P20 Talks made history by gathering professionals across multiple professional fields and continents to illuminate Life Skills as distinct foundational skill sets teachable by third party educators.  

Rest assured you are.  Every exchange with fellow human beings –  whether disagreeing with someone at the office, disciplining your child or fighting with your spouse – contributes in thousands of ways to the larger story of humanity. Central to every interaction – business or personal –  is communication.  

How do people learn this critical Life Skill? From communication experts? Conflict resolution classes? Not usually. They learn from role modeling.

Why is it human beings enthusiastically embrace quality education from third party educators for everything from soccer to science, yet accept children simply learning what they live when it comes to interpersonal communication? What price does humanity pay for its failure to better appreciate this critical Life Skill? 

Adults do, of course, routinely prepare millions of people to respond to crises in the communications arena – doctors, lawyers, law enforcement, military. Isn’t this about as logical as telling people to jump in the cockpit of 747′s absent quality instruction then cleaning up crash sites?

When couples struggle in relationships they are encouraged to attend ”therapy.” Therapy comes from the word “remedial” meaning “to restore”. If you break a leg you attend therapy to restore your motor abilities. If you suffer a stroke, you attend therapy to restore cognitive abilities.

What couple attending therapy to learn quality communication skills ever enjoyed what anyone would define as highly competent ones? They are not restoring anything, they are learning it for the very first time.  Shame is a lousy ingredient in any educational process. 

If we can construct rockets that deliver people to the moon, might we also construct more dynamic means for empowering every individual with the skills necessary for success in the mandatory curriculum of communing with others?

How might the world change if instead of having “child care centers “ around the planet we respected these same facilities as Communication 101 Centers? How might school children blossom when we affirm for them the many ways people communicate – verbal and non-verbal - and their capacity to expand upon parents’ teachings? How might divorce rates decrease when these same children become adults and create their own families? 

Options for change are as vast as the universe when we take the first small step of acknowledging the centrality of communication in every avenue of human interaction and advocate a more proactive educational process. Doing so will constitute one giant leap for mankind.

Editor’s Note:  In 2012, Parenting 2.0 members made history by gathering professionals across multiple disciplines and continents for P20 Talks. P20 Talks was the first professional conference to recognize Life Skills as distinct, critical skill sets teachable by third party educators. Thought Leaders for P20 Talks 2012 Communication 101 panel included: Dr. Rosina McAlpine, Dr. Raelynn Maloney,  Dr. Yvonne Sum, Melissa Pazen, Mark Romero, and Susie Walton.

God grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Is there a relationship between everyday conflict and murder? Though we will never know for certain the complexity of factors that prompted a young man to brutally gun down dozens of innocent children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14th, 2012, we do know there is a high correlation between issues of social alienation and mass murders. 

So while some adults attempt to distance themselves from this most recent tragedy by avoiding headlines, and others cite evil forces or guns as the source of violence, I propose that the truly courageous join me in asking what we ourselves can do differently.

A core need of every human being is mattering to others. If children cannot get positive attention, they will seek negative attention. Interpersonal communication is a mandatory curriculum.  Our proficiency in this arena impacts every avenue of human interaction, yet how many ever receive formal education? We spend years teaching children to read and write but we call them names and punish them when they struggle on playgrounds absent education in conflict resolution. Is it any wonder these same children then do the same to one another as adults?

Free will does not mean we choose the assignment, merely the amount of suffering human beings endure until we learn to do things differently.  Need humanity scream louder than when a classroom of first graders is gunned down in broad daylight? I think not.

It is time we demonstrate greater respect for the arena of emotional intelligence and empower children and adults for success.  How do we get there? How do we make this shift?

We start by linking arms and acknowledging that emotional intelligence matters. We start by recognizing that not everyone begins the educational process with the same aptitude at the same starting line. We start by not ostracizing those most challenged. We start by ceasing name calling and embracing compassion. We start by availing the wisdom of third party educators passionate about interpersonal communication and optimistic about our potential for success. We start by retiring the impossibly impoverished paradigm of children simply “learning what they live” and better supporting those performing the most important job on earth.

This is our mission at Parenting 2.0. This is the reason “EQ elevated to IQ” was one of just nine panel discussions focusing on Life Skills at the P20 Talks Conference in San Diego, CA August of 2012. The world changes when we change.  Please join us today in being the change the world awaits.  Sign the Global Presence Pledge and expand your knowledge by embracing the wisdom of P20 Thought Leaders listed below. 

P20 Talks Thought Leaders:  Tara Kennedy-Kline, (author of Stop Raising Einstein), Roger Frame (author of Don’t Carve the Turkey with a Chainsaw),  Dr. Rosina McAlpine (author of Inspired Children) Diana Sterling (author of The Parent as Coach Approach), Sheryl Stoller, (Founder, Stoller Parent Coaching)