What can kids listen to on the radio?

The Kids’ Scoop

Lil Fox had concerns about what music the UK played. When we started talking about going to a new school, Lil Fox would ask questions like, “Do you think my classmates know song X?” Once he began school here, if they played a song he recognized- he came home excited to share with us.

A parent might not worry about go-to radio stations when moving to or visiting a new country. It doesn’t mean, you as a kid feel the same way. Music is a big part of your life. You use music and songs to help you learn about topics when you’re younger. Music is also therapeutic. It helps us with our emotions!

In fact, listening to a favorite song is the best feeling! In our family, discovering a new favorite song or hearing a current one when we least expect it can make our day. It’s like a big surprise party! With technology at our fingertips, we get spoiled listening to any song we want at any time. To keep things humbling, when we travel by car, our family listens to music the old school way. We pick a radio station and leave it up to the dealer’s choice.

We stumbled upon Fun Kids radio station in our maiden voyage of surfing the channels of UK radio. That was a big day for us. Back where we lived in the states, we did not have a kids FM radio station (at least to our knowledge). So this discovery had our minds explode into millions of pieces of celebratory confetti!

The Kids Radio Station

Lil Fox says, “it’s not like kids that are fun. It’s a station, like music! The music they play makes me feel happy.”

You’ll hear a variety of kid-appropriate songs you might find on adult radio stations coupled with kids songs like Disney tunes from Moana all the way to YouTube sensation Koo Koo Kangaroo. They even have an animal hour where we heard the song “Sally the Camel.” Hedgehog loved this because we used to sing that in parent/child swim back in the US.

So if you find yourself searching for Fun Kids in the UK, it is not on FM radio. It’s on DAB (digital audio broadcasting). DAB is something that the United States doesn’t use (at least while writing this). Something new for both parents and kids to learn more on! Perhaps you might be able to listen to it for a bit through the website where you live.

Parental Anecdotes

It’s always nice to have something at your fingertips to help build up the excitement of a fun new place. If you plan to move to or visit the UK with music-loving little ones, Fun Kids can be a quick win. It was quite a gift to see our kids’ eyes light up when they started hearing some of their favorites come on the car radio that we only would hear playing on Pandora or Spotify back in the US!

The station also plays songs that we, as parents, love too. It is a magical moment when your kids like a song just as much as you. Does anyone try to sing along to your favorite song in the car with kids? Like you are really leaning into the moment – your body goes on autopilot. It’s moving to the rhythm, your voice matches pitch (or almost), your inner diva is getting her 5-minutes of fame. It’s great.

Then your kids tell yell at you to flat out stop because they want to hear the song. A twist of the knife, when they start to sing it – but you are not allowed to join in after repeated attempts. There are a lot of things in life that are hard to endure. I’m not above putting that on the table as one of them. Jamming to a good song is a mood booster! Being called off the field and put on the bench during that activity. Ouch!

I can’t remember the last time we went in the car without a request from Lil Fox or Hedgehog to turn up a “favorite” song. At what number threshold do things stop becoming favorites versus something you like. If you haven’t tried, it’s worth exploring that conversation with a kid at some point.