Finding Solace in Podcasts for Children
How these shows are helping kids—and parents—deal with a difficult world
Weeks ago, a man emailed me saying he and his wife often listen to my podcast together, and that it helps him with his anxiety. They don’t have children. At the time I thought it might be a fluke, but then I heard from a mother of five who said one story “ministered to me as much as it did to my 5-year-old.” After reviewing other messages I’d received, I realized I’d heard these types of asides at other times, too.
These anecdotes remind me of how, so often, the books I read to my sons speak to me as much as they speak to them. Recently, when reading The Story of Ferdinand to my 5-year-old, I felt transported back to childhood, remembering how the book spoke to me as an introverted child. It’s a little sad that most of us abandon children’s media once we leave childhood, only to rediscover their comforts if we have children of our own.
Now feels like a good time for both children and adults to turn to the solace of media intended for children. As a parent in the United States, where we’ve seen both natural and human-created disasters in recent weeks, and where our political climate is as toxic as the air hanging over Napa Valley, I feel the anxiety. It is palpable. As parents — as human beings — we need tools to help us cope.
Author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin has repeatedly shared her love of children’s literature. On her blog, she writes that reading children’s books “isn’t about escapism, or turning away from difficult truths and realities, but about finding ways to maintain your mental equilibrium during tough times.” Likewise many children’s films, like Inside Out, which carry simple core messages like the importance of honoring one’s feelings, can touch us more deeply as we age.
Sometimes just hearing the wonder in a child’s voice can be a shot in the arm for children and adults alike.
It’s not new to look to children’s content for emotional uplift. What is new is the rapid rise of podcasts for children, which provide a new medium through which these messages of comfort and refuge can be delivered.
We can now access podcasts — thoughtfully, carefully produced podcasts — with the touch of a screen. These audio shows often highlight the types of messages we naturally seek out in times of uncertainty and crisis. They can serve as an additional voice in our children’s ears, and in our own, providing comfort, language, and hope.
But Why — A Podcast for Curious Kids, is clear-eyed and sensitive in its approach. The show allows children to ask some big questions about life, and — in a recent episode — about death. Listening to this episode felt like an unflappable friend had just arrived in my home, ready with perfectly crafted phrases to help me answer my son’s increasingly specific questions about death. But Why’s previous episode on how to speak to children about violence in the news was handled with the same level of care and demonstrated the nimbleness of the podcasting medium when it appeared in But Why’s feed just days after the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Seeking refuge in content created for a child’s ears is not about turning away from reality; it’s about restoring one’s sense of hope when there is much to despair.
Sometimes just hearing the wonder in a child’s voice can be a shot in the arm for children and adults alike. Book Club for Kids, a podcast hosted by award-winning public radio journalist Kitty Felde, does an excellent job of incorporating recordings of children. In Book Club’s second episode, a group of 5th graders discuss Kwame Alexander’s book The Crossover. The children speak movingly about how the book made them think about their relationships with their families. You can hear the surprise and delight in their voices as they explain that, in reading the book, they connected with poetry for the very first time because it felt culturally relevant to them. Ear Snacks, a podcast for younger listeners, peppers its episodes with adorable clips of children. In the episode Critters, the show explores how kids around the world are all connected and the sweet truth that animals don’t see borders.
Sometimes — and especially in these strange times — as adults we are simply tapped dry of the calmness, the patience, and the good cheer our starry-eyed children expect. For years, we’ve looked to children’s music, children’s books, and to figures like Mr. Rogers to help us along. Now there are also podcasters like April Eight, host of a fairytale podcast, ready to step in when parents can’t shake off the day’s news, let alone muster ethereality. There are podcasts like Cozy Corner and Peace Out, specifically designed to help children calm down for bed. And the long-running Sparkle Stories podcast has drawn thanks from many parents, one of whom said the show “gives me language to talk about hard topics with my kids and also creative ways to embrace life.”
Seeking refuge in content created for a child’s ears is not about turning away from reality; it’s about restoring one’s sense of hope when there is much to despair. And as parents, we simply do not have the option to abandon hope. Raising a child requires hope — hope that the world will be intact generations from now, hope that every child will have a valued place in society, hope that cooler heads will prevail on the world stage. Perhaps if we can shore ourselves up by revisiting the best aspects of humanity through children’s media, it might allow us to face the worst aspects of modern life with renewed strength.
