One of the great joys of driving is listening to the radio. But when you have young kids in the backseat, which station you choose can be tricky because of bad words, scary news stories and off-color DJ humor.
KPLU 88.5 is the perfect example. I love NPR and listen to it whenever I can — but not when my 5-year-old is in the car. I don’t want her to hear about atrocities in Iraq or other horrors because she could get nightmares. Jazz is much easier on little ears.
Classical music on King 98.1 is also a safe bet. This is known as “Number 1 Music” in our car due to its preset. My daughter is a real King FM snob, because that’s all she wants to listen to. “Turn on number 1!” Weekend drives are always made better when our family listens to “The Score,” which features great music from movies.
I’m a life-long fan of country music, but I save that for alone time too. These days country music seems to have a lot more bad words in it than it used to. Plus I heard one of our local DJs make a joke about President Obama selling crack, and that was enough for me to deprogram that station from my presets forever.
If you want to mock Clinton smoking pot or Bush snorting cocaine, that’s fair game. I can explain that to my kids — with difficulty. But saying our first African American president is a drug dealer because he’s black is really off base. My kids don’t need to listen to racist jokes on the way to school, and neither do I.
Two DJs who will never say something PG-13 are Steve and Amy from Spirit 105.3. The kids and I love to guess their Secret Sound, which pretty much always sounds like a stapler to me. But of course, Christian music isn’t for everyone.
My 9-year-old’s favorite station is The Mountain 103.7, which is unfortunately no longer on the airwaves. I suppose there’s some way to figure out how to listen to The Mountain on my phone, but I haven’t discovered how to do that yet.
Luckily, 107.7 The End plays similar music, so that station fills the void. Every time they talk about their two-minute advertising promise, my kids are really impressed. “Wow,” my daughter will say. “Only two minutes of commercials. That’s really short.” I’m not sure where her awe comes from because I always switch stations during adds anyway.
What’s my favorite station? Well, now I feel lame. Actually I am extremely ashamed. Go ahead and judge me, America, because I deserve it.
I’m a Canadian radio fan.
Listening to Ocean 98.5 from Victoria makes me feel like I’m in a different country, even though I’m just driving to Fred Meyer. “Oh! It’s 10 degrees Celsius today. We better take our coats.”
Listen carefully, kids. Maybe you’ll learn the metric system.
Jennifer Bardsley is an Edmonds mom of two. Find her on Twitter @jennbardsley and at www.heraldnet.com/ibrakeformoms and teachingmybabytoread.com.
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