Welcome to the Simply Charlotte Mason podcast. I'm Sonia Schaefer. You know, in a Charlotte

Mason approach, we want to give our children the best books, worthy books, and we hold those in such

high esteem. We value those. But what do you do if your child says, no, I like the twaddle instead?

Joining me to discuss that dilemma is Laura Pitney.

Laura, thanks for joining me for this interesting discussion.

I think it might be more common than people admit.

Yeah, I think it is.

I think it is.

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here to talk about it. So what is twaddle? Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here to talk about it.

So what is twaddle? Yeah, I think we should start there because some moms might say, my child is reading

twaddle when it might not be twaddle. So I would define twaddle as dumbed down, usually short, choppy sentences.

But I think there's two aspects we need to discuss here, all right?

One is the reading level, which might be the style, the short choppy sentences, the one-syllable words, all right?

That's the reading level, but also the more important thing is the ideas that are included

in the book.

Yeah, because you can still have a lower reading level, but still feed the good ideas

and the content.

So there are two separate things, but you can still make good choices for the lower reading levels with good ideas.

And especially if the child is reading for themselves, which is what this question is all about, that my child just wants to read the twaddle, then in Charlotte's approach, first through third grade, you are reading the school books to the child because they can't read those higher level books for themselves.

So yeah, they might be reading some short choppy sentences as they're finding their feet in the reading process, but we can still make

sure it has good ideas, that it's not just fluff. And I feel like that's where a struggle is,

is finding the good books for reading practice and fluency. And I feel like sometimes you feel like twaddle is your only option.

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