Capital Region Living Magazine

In the spirit of being a more active participant in life, I suggest reading The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mother Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid by Ellen Currey-Wilson. She was brought up watching television to the exclusion of everything else, but when she discovers she is pregnant, she vows to raise her child without television and to drastically cut back on her own viewing. After her son, Casey, is born, she struggles to survive the mind-numbing boredom of spending all of her time with someone with whom she can’t have a conversation without the comfort of her usual television fix. As she struggles with her own addiction and her feelings of guilt for depriving her child of something the rest of America thinks is perfectly normal, she manages to raise a child who is intelligent, creative, self-sufficient, independent and not particularly interested in watching television, even when the opportunity presents itself. Despite being somewhat neurotic, Currey-Wilson has an engaging narrative style. She is making slow progress on her path toward enlightenment; the way she entwines stories of her own spiritual growth with tales of her son’s physical and intellectual progress is reminiscent of Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions.

May 2007

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