The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid

Like most parents, Ellen Currey-Wilson and her husband aspire to do a better job of child-rearing than their own parents. Currey-Wilson spent far too much of her childhood watching The Beverly Hillbillies and Hawaii Five-O; maintained intimate long-term relationships with Mary, Rhoda, and Phyllis; and kept up with the fictional history of every character on Friends. But now she longs for her son, Casey, to know the people around him better than he knows the Teletubbies.

So naturally, like most parents, she goes a bit overboard. Banning the boob tube from her family's daily existence, Currey-Wilson vows that her son (and her accommodating husband, by extension) won't be exposed to even a split second of screen time and pledges to wean herself from her own television addiction.

In this revealing and very funny take on parenting in a media-crazed world, Currey-Wilson recounts her increasingly outlandish behavior: becoming a human shield as she throws herself in front of the TV set at her son's playmates' house, experiencing fits of insecurity as she worries whether Casey will be ostracized for not knowing the theme song to SpongeBob SquarePants. And her own habit? She sets timetables for unplugging herself but often falls off the wagon, racing up to the storage room, where she's hidden the TV, to get a fix of Three's Company reruns while Casey naps. But something remarkable happens to her family as television finally assumes a backseat to real life: their relationships begin to deepen and grow.

In an age when it's easier to flip on the TV than to truly interact with the people around us, The Big Turnoff shows what can happen when one woman decides to buck the trend.

"Currey-Wilson decides in the early stages of her pregnancy that her child will grow up without television so the family can form stronger emotional ties; the only problem is that she herself is totally addicted to the tube. She does manage to cut down her viewing after her son's birth, taking her vigilance in maintaining his abstinence to extremes. She panics when she brings Casey to a friend's house and finds a television on. She grants him permission to watch the Olympics, then leaps in front of the set to block the commercials. But when her son doesn't play with his classmates, her fear runs in the opposite direction — should she have let him watch TV so he'd be able to fit in with other kids? Currey-Wilson's vocal, earnest hostility to mainstream culture (even when she's basking in sitcoms) sometimes makes it hard to sympathize, except that she's also bracingly up-front about her insecurities and petty jealousies. And her anti-TV crusade becomes much less simplistic as she reveals how much she's still playing out the dramas of her own childhood. Curry-Wilson writes with self-effacing humor, and any mom can identify with her sincere effort to give her child the best she can. (Apr. 20)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Alternately hilarious and trenchant in its observations about our media-crazed culture, this is the true tale of a TV-addicted mother's struggle to kick the habit and keep the boob tube out of her son's daily existence.

Like most parents, Ellen Currey-Wilson and her husband aspired to be better parents than their own. Currey-Wilson, who shared most of her childhood with The Beverly Hillbillies, maintained intimate relationships with Mary, Rhoda, and Phyllis, and remained up-to-date on the fictional history of every character on Friends, longs for her son, Casey, to know the people around him better than he knows the Teletubbies. And, like most parents, she goes a bit overboard.

In her revealing and outspoken take on parenting, Currey-Wilson recounts her increasingly outlandish behavior—such as literally throwing herself in front of the TV set at her son's playmates' houses to prevent any inadvertent watching—and the intermittent fits of insecurity that find her worrying whether Casey might be ostracized for not knowing the theme song to SpongeBob SquarePants. But something remarkable happens as TV assumes a backseat to real life: Currey-Wilson's relationships with her laidback husband, new-age sister, eccentric mother, and remarkably self-possessed son begin to deepen and grow. In an age when it's easier to flip on the TV than to interact with people, The Big Turnoff shows what happens when one woman decides to buck the trend.

When she finally stopped watching reruns of Seinfeld, Ellen Currey-Wilson brought TV-Turnoff Week to her son's school and started inspiring others to get unplugged. She now offers TV-free parenting workshops and has been featured in newspapers and magazines for her work. Currey-Wilson lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and son, one cat, and, yes, one television.