The reason that kids and parents hold the regular ratings higher than the active ratings is because that is what they are told.
What they really want is to compete with each other and to be able to track their progress ... ratings (whether regular or active) will achieve this. If we, as organizers, position this properly, they will be just as interested in their active ratings as their regular ones.
The games are different. Kids play Active games and should concentrate on their active ratings in their early developmental years.
Once their interest starts turning to wanting to take more time with their games, they should start looking to working on their regular games and ratings.
They would actually get more satisfaction with this approach. They can watch their active ratings rise through their development. When the "graduate" to regular time games (and actually start using that time) if their regular rating has not been falsly established through rating active development games as regular, they will actually start their regular rating much higher in general than otherwise.
This also has the benefit of established players not worrying as much about playing these Under-Rated kids.
Does this make more sense out of Paul's suggestion and direction?