Our Mission

Childhood Matters is a live one-hour weekly call-in radio show on 98.1 KISS-FM in the San Francisco Bay Area, 105.1 KOCN-FM in Monterey and Santa Cruz, and KBBF 89.1-FM in the North Bay, and 1480 KGOE-AM in Eureka. The show is presented by Interactive Parenting Media. Click here to see our coverage map.

The mission of Interactive Parenting Media is to inform and inspire parents and all who care about children so that every child may be happy, healthy, and thrive. We provide a respectful, inclusive public forum through our interactive radio shows — Childhood Matters and Nuestros Niños — and other media in English and Spanish.

To read our founding story, click here.



Board of Directors

	Board President Susan Lindheim, MD, has been a pediatrician at the Kaiser Permanente Richmond facility for almost 25 years. She is also Assistant Physician-in-Chief for Kaiser Permanente East Bay and the past regional Co-Chair of the KP Northern California Diversity Council. Susan has been honored with many awards for her clinical, community and diversity work. Susan has been a board member since the start of Childhood Matters.
	Board Secretary Born and raised in Mexico City, Rocio de Mateo Smith has worked over 25 years in the field of developmental disabilities with a special emphasis in early intervention and services to immigrant communities. She has been the Executive Director of Area 5 Developmental Disabilities Board for the past 14 years. In this role, Rocio advocates for the service rights of people with developmental disabilities of all ages both at the individual and systemic levels. Prior to this position, she was the Executive Director of Agency for Infant Development, a Fremont-based program for infants with disabilities and their families. Married to Carl Smith, Rocio has three adult children and a granddaughter.
	Mick Jones is the owner and operator of Mick Jones Studio. He is also the father of a young child.
	Michael Orias is a finance and technology professional. He has also worked in the high technology industry with experience in sales, marketing and product management. Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Musically Minded Academy, a nonprofit music school located in Oakland, CA. Michael lives in Oakland with his wife and two young boys.
	Nikhila Pai is a city services auditor with the Controller’s Office for the City and County of San Francisco.
	Max Samimi works with Wells Fargo Bank in Commercial Real Estate.
	Marylee Stadler, MA, has been a bilingual educator for over 20 years. Marylee taught fourth grade, first grade, and especially enjoyed the many years of teaching Kindergarten. She enjoys working with young children and deeply believes in the mission of Interactive Parenting Media. Currently, Marylee is a program assistant specializing in serving the English learners in the West Contra Costa Unified School District. She is married to Eduardo Cabrera, an artist and interpreter, and a native of Uruguay. She loves music, travel, and walking their dog, Chico.
	Donna Terman, JD, is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Purdue University. She and her husband Bill Brown are the parents of a son and daughter, now students at San Jose State University and UC San Diego. Donna is currently a program manager at the Silicon Valley Children’s Fund. In the course of her career, she has been a staff member or consultant to several philanthropic entities, including the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Poizner Family Foundation, the Ellison Family Foundation, the Bernard Newcomb Foundation, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
	Love Weinstock has been teaching and developing innovative educational enrichment programs for Bay Area youth for over twenty years. Love’s teaching experience spans pre-school through adult students with an emphasis on middle school education. During Love’s tenure as Director of Service Learning and Public Purpose at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland, the program received local and national recognition for excellence. Love was the founding Director of Aim High Oakland, an academic enrichment program for public middle school students. She has also served as a consultant in independent schools throughout the country, supporting the development of diversity and service learning programs, as well curriculum and teacher capacity. Most recently Love served as founding Associate Head of School at Making Waves Academy, a public charter middle school in West Contra Costa County. Love has a Master of Arts degree in Educational Leadership from Mills College. Love has a strong background in operations and systems development, fundraising and development, program development, and the arts. She is an avid reader and gardener, a jewelry designer, and has a passion for spending time out of doors.

The Founding of Childhood Matters and Nuestros Niños
by Rona Renner, RN

In the early 1990s I was teaching classes at the Kaiser Richmond Medical Center, in the Department of Pediatrics. The classes focused on temperament, discipline, cultural differences in parenting, setting limits, and respectful communication. Each week parents from different backgrounds would attend. Some were sent by Child Protective Services because of child abuse or neglect issues, and others come out of a desire to learn more about raising children. These classes provided me with a rich education that I had not had previously. I heard the voices of parents who were doing the best they could to raise their children, even though

One night three weeks into the series, I was talking about discipline and how important it is to think about what we want to teach our children. The previous week we had discussed the cultural differences in parenting and how many things were passed on to us from previous generations.

On this night a father who had not yet spoken during the class raised his hand and stood up in the back of the room. As he spoke, everyone was quiet. I don't remember the exact words, but the essence of it was that now he understood why he shouldn't hurt his child any more. As he spoke I got the chills and felt a tap on my shoulder. The experience was as if an angel was tapping me and saying, "You've got to find a way for other parents to hear this father." I had never had that kind of experience before, and when I went home I told my husband that something really strange happened in class. The father's understanding of why he shouldn't hurt his child was deep and sincere, and I knew that it was rare to hear the words he was saying.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do until many months later when I was in my PJs folding the laundry, and I turned on the radio to find the OJ Simpson trial on the air. I listened for a few minutes and then realized that they had gone to a break from the trial and were talking about disciplining children. The guest on the show said something that I didn't agree with, and for the first time I called into a talk radio show, and said my opinion. The host of the show had me hold on the line afterwards and asked if I would take calls since they were losing their guest and the trial wasn't ready to come back on the air. I said "Sure."

For the next hour in my PJs, I took calls from folks on KPIX (San Francisco), answering questions about discipline, temperament, and ADHD. When the hour was up I looked at my husband and said, "That's it, that's what I'm supposed to do, talk to parents on the radio and let other parents speak their mind."

It took about ten years for me to figure out how to get on radio. It is not an easy task, and it was much more complicated then I imagined.

For a year my husband Mick and I did a Saturday night radio show called The Art of Parenting, on Free Radio Berkeley, the only station we could find that was interested in a show on parenting. After that, for over 3 years, I was the parenting editor on KPFA's Morning Show once a week and then once a month. I learned a great deal about radio, but that wasn't the station I wanted to be on. The folks in Richmond had never heard of KPFA, and I wanted to reach a diverse audience. So I found a radio consultant, Peter B. Collins, by calling him and telling him that I wanted to become the Anti-Dr.Laura.

With the help of Peter and many friends and relatives, we came up with a plan, became a 501(c)(3), and applied to First 5 Alameda County for funding. We did not get funding until the third request, and the funding was just enough to cover the cost of 14 shows. KISS-FM had never had a parenting show on their "Old School and Today's R&B station," but for the right amount of money to cover the air time, they were willing to take a chance. So, using my dining room table as our meeting space, and my extra bedroom as the office for our Americorps*VISTA volunteer, we launched Childhood Matters in November of 2002.

Once we were on the air we went to other funders for support, knowing that once they could hear what we were doing they would understand the value of using the media to reach families and providers with reliable information. We approached First 5 Santa Clara, and they were very clear that we would have to serve the Spanish-speaking community if they were to fund us. We were already talking about how to do that, so with their support we launched Nuestros Niños. We didn't have enough money to do that, so a few key people deferred their payments in order to make it happen. In the photo, our staff in 2005.

From there we went to First 5 Marin and First 5 Contra Costa, and people like UWBA found us, as did other funders. Now it has been almost six years that we are on the air, and we continue to find new partners and reach more parents.

There is more to this story, but the birth of Childhood Matters came from the words of a father who was struggling to do well by his child.