Breaking the Cycle

So yesterday while I was at Hendersonville, I was teaching the Artist Badge to the Sunbeams (group of younger girls in the Salvation Army similar to Girl Scouts).
Because we were talking about creating things, I read them the creation story from Genesis while they occupied their hands with some play dough.
It's amazing how if kids hands are doing something, their mouths will verbalize their thoughts. Somehow, after reading the story, we got on the topic of birthday's and from there we started talking about fathers. That discussion lead the kids to reveal how one girl used to see her dad all the time before they left him. She said the only birthday present he'd ever given her was the Heelie's she was wearing. Another girl said she never gets to see her dad because he's in jail for not paying child support.
Then, with everything these kids have to go through, there will always be glimpses of wisdom. We started talking about the Sunbeam pledge which talks about praying, being kind to others, etc. It also talks about using good words. One girl said, "Miss Kristy, do you think it's okay to say bad words, like for grown-ups." So I said that personally, I think that no one, not even grown ups should say bad words. She responded with, my mom has a problem with saying bad things. Another girl pipes up and said that HER mom says bad words all the time. When I asked her how it made her feel, she said that it makes her really angry and she feels bad when her mom does it. We talked a little about how words are very powerful and they can make us feel good and they can make us feel bad. So we need to choose our words carefully.
So, the girl who originally asked the question said, "Well, the reason that my mom says bad words is because HER mom used to say bad words to her, so that's why she says bad words to me. But I'm not going to say bad words to my kids because I don't like it."
Somehow we went from an artist badge, to creation, to fathers, to a 10 year old girl deciding that she is going to break the cycle.
That was a good day.