Bob Dylan's "Sooner or Later" is playing here at Starbucks. ahhh...loving it. Forgot how much I like his music.

Thinking about my eldest son...realized that the one and only time I have seen him truly and wholly remorseful for something he did was when I enacted an unusual punishment. He'd been "playing" David and Goliath with his little brother and hit him in the head with a rock. I don't remember if there was blood or not, but I was pretty upset and he didn't seem very sorry even though his brother was crying and obviously hurt. I made him sit at the kitchen table and draw a picture of what he'd done; he started protesting but I told him that he wasn't getting up until he'd drawn a complete rendering of the event. By the time he was done with the picture he was sobbing, really upset, said he hadn't meant to actually injure Nathan. When I let him get up, he ran to his brother, hugged him and apologized all over the place. I've never seen him as sorry as he was that day.

What was it about that punishment that was so effective?

I never inflicted it on him again; maybe I should have...I don't know.