MY LIFE WITH THE WALTER BOYS (SEASON 3)

The Netflix show My Life with the Walter Boys seems like a teen romance triangle built around Jackie and the Walter Boys, Cole and Alex. But it is so much more than that. For me, it is about how teens make decisions, right and wrong ones, and how much adults should be involved in their teens' lives.

The show starts with Jackie, who loses her family and has to leave her normal life in Manhattan to move to a small town in Colorado to live with her mom's best friend and their family. She is going through something very exceptional, losing all her family and friends, while also being a teenager and experiencing first love, the pressure of school and university acceptance, and all of that in a new environment.

Jackie comes from a high-achiever family and has a very clear plan for her future. She knows which college she wants to go to, she knows how life will look like, and she knows what she wants to achieve when she moves to Silver Falls. But her priorities start to change there, making it hard for her to accept who she is and who she wants to be. Finding their own identity is very important for teens and it can be difficult enough for them without leaving their known environment, but experiencing this without her family and at a new place makes it even harder. She makes decisions she feels completely certain about, and then realizes she may want something entirely different.

And that is exactly what I love about My Life with the Walter Boys. It shows teens that even when they are absolutely certain about one decision now, they might change their opinion later on. Teens can sound incredibly sure when they tell us what they want. And as parents, we naturally want to step in, help, and maybe even prevent a mistake. But sometimes they need to make their decisions themselves before they can understand whether it was actually right for them. My Life with the Walter Boys shows that again and again.

What also fascinates me is the Walter household. Katherine and George are raising ten kids, which creates a family dynamic very different from my own experience as a mother of one teenager. I don’t think it would be fair for me to look at that household and decide that their parenting is either good or bad. But it is interesting for me to see how much happens in the teenagers’ lives without the parents knowing about it. There are so many important decisions happening all around them and it seems like Katherine and George don’t see most of them, and the teens are often left to work things out themselves.

And that makes me wonder how much we as parents are actually supposed to know. We often say we want our teens to become independent. But independence also means accepting that we will not be involved in everything. And that can make us fear losing control and our connection with them. But giving a teenager space doesn’t mean we shouldn't know about what is going on in their life. I think the difficult part for us as parents is knowing when we should step in and when we simply need to be there.

For parents, My Life with the Walter Boys gives us much more to talk about than simply asking, “Team Cole or Team Alex?”

Watching Jackie and the other teens become absolutely convinced about their decisions and then changing them completely is a reminder that changing your mind isn't necessarily a failure. Sometimes it is part of learning who you are and understanding yourself, which is an important lesson for our teens. They often see change as failure, but we need to tell them that changing their mind is normal and can be part of finding themselves.

Instead of asking your teen whether parents should interfere or stay out of their relationships, because I think we can predict the answer to that one, it is better to ask them if they think there is a point where they would actually want us to step in. I think their answer could actually tell us a lot about where they see the line between privacy and needing their parents.

The show can also open conversations about belonging. Jackie spends a lot of time trying to work out where she fits in without losing the person she was before. And that is where we can ask our teenager if they think that changing because of the people around them means they’re losing themselves.

And because relationships dominate so much of the show, we can talk with them about feelings and ask if they have ever been completely sure about something and then realized later that they wanted something different. And the answer doesn’t even have to be about relationships. It could be about school, friendships, college, or any of the decisions they are starting to make for themselves.

My Life with the Walter Boys is easy to watch as a romantic teen drama, but I think there is more to explore in this show than the love triangle suggests.

For parents, the most interesting part is watching teenagers try things, change their minds, and become more independent while the adults around them work out how much space to give them.

Season 3 makes that tension even stronger. And with another season ahead, there are still plenty of unresolved relationships and family dynamics left to explore.