Last evening after dinner, Megan and Matthew were off in another room playing together nicely (or so we thought) when Matt comes down the hall crying. Bill intercepted him and proceeded to ask what was wrong. Matt told him that Megan had bitten him.
By the time I walked out to see what was going on, Bill was already talking to Megan. Her response to this was, "No, no Daddy. I didn't bite him. Matthew fell and bumped his head!"
Well, we were both convinced by her response so Bill decided to humor Matt a little by playing along in order to calm him down. When he asked him where Megan had bitten him, Matt calmly held up his hand and said, "right there". Well sure enough - little teeth marks could be seen right above his knuckles. Unfortunately, that still wasn't enough to entirely convince Bill and I as Matthew has recently begun a little habit of biting his fingers when he gets mad about something.
So as I'm looking at the bite marks, I'm trying to decide if there is a noticeable gap between the teeth as that would surely be a sign that Megan was the culprit. Unfortunately I still could not say for sure, but in the mean time, Bill had asked Megan how Matthew got the teeth marks on his fingers. Her response? "I don't know Daddy. Maybe the kitty cats did it." (In the most innocent of voices I might add.) 'Nough said kiddo.
Bill took Matt to another room to calm him down and I sat down with Megan. When she realized that she wasn't going to get into too much trouble for this, she did come clean and admit that she bit him. She said that it was because she had told him to stay in the TV room while she got a toy but he didn't listen to her and followed her into the other room.
After explaining that Mommy and Daddy always know when she's lying to us (AHEM - does it hurt that I lied to her while explaining why it's wrong to lie in the first place?) and that if she lies she'll get into bigger trouble than if she had just admitted that she did something wrong, I had to come up with a "punishment". At this point I didn't want to make it too brutal as she had come clean and it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. So I told her to apoligize to Daddy for lying and that Matthew would need an apology too. But I added on to the Matthew part of it. I threw in a punishment that my parents used to do me and my siblings when we would fight. The one that we all hated with all our might. In the eyes of a kid, I remember thinking that it was the worst punishment of all....she had to kiss him and tell him she loved him.
After we put the kids into bed, Bill and I were sitting with our own thoughts when we both started to chuckle at pretty much the same time. We were both thinking about what had happened. Megan was so convincing that had there not been teeth marks on Matt's fingers, we would have believed her in a heart beat. So how many other times has she lied to us about something and gotten away with it? When did this start? Of course we both want to believe that this was the first time, but damn, she was good at it! I guess we'll both be paying closer attention to the details when Matt tells us something like this in the future.
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