It's hard to be patient when your world is falling apart.

In recent weeks, it's been hard to pull myself away from watching developments in a world where brave, hardworking people are threatened with exploitation, incarceration and even death because they don't have the right identification documents.

My family has held our collective breath in horror watching scenes unfold in which hundreds of people are sent to a prison with slave labor and torture without any chance for a trial or legal representation. Once they get there, they learn that their sentences will never end.

It is heartbreaking to watch a world where soldiers train weapons on children who are brutally separated from their parents.

We’re watching a world where propaganda is used to make members of ethnic groups seem less sympathetic in hopes that no one will rise to their aid when they are subjugated...or even when they are outright slaughtered.

A world where genocide is used to access land and environmental resources that the powerful people “need” in order to build their technology.

Technology that will give them even more power–including the power to surveil communication, making it hard to organize resistance.

Sound familiar? Perhaps you have been watching Andor, too. Or the news.

In one scene I can’t forget, we see a woman laboring on a farm as she is approached by an official who knows she is undocumented. He threatens to rape her, confident that she has no recourse.

The similarities between Andor’s world and our own are overpowering. If the news is causing distress, Andor is not exactly escapist viewing… Like many of the Star Wars spinoffs, the right age for viewing with kids will depend a lot on your kids’ ages and sensitivities. But if you think Star Wars is all about light saber fights, this is something very different. Roger Ebert liked it, too.

The characters and storytelling are inspired. I’m not a hardcore Star Wars fan (Andor is a prequel to the events of Rogue One) but I loved it.

For our family of two adults and an older teen, Andor was an unmissable series that left us contemplating the abuses of power we're witnessing around us, and feeling some hope and inspiration, too.

Rebellions are built on hope.

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Here’s a quote from Andor: Mon Mothma’s powerful speech in the Senate after a peaceful protest turns into a massacre.

”The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.

Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.

The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.

When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands,
we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

Here’s an Andor montage—but rather than risk spoilers, maybe just…
watch the whole thing? You’ll want to start with Season 1.

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As you talk with your kids about challenging topics and current events, I hope this video can help.

(I pulled this video from from my “Raising Tough Topics with Your Kids” course)

Here are a few other resources for talking with kids about scary and potentially traumatic events they may see in their social media feed, hear about or witness in other ways.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center: Handle With Care: Supporting Young People During Crisis this is a resource “for families and educators who must respond to the needs of children as a traumatizing event unfolds.”

Sesame Workshop has some good resources for talking with younger kids.

Anya Kamenetz ‘s The Golden Hour offers excellent resources for talking climate with kids (and ourselves.)

I’m eagerly awaiting Melinda Wenner Moyer‘s new book —Hello, Cruel World!
Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times (out May 27!) It aims to help us “prepare them for an impossibly complex and scary future.”
Yup, I’m definitely getting this one.