One thing to remember is that sometimes it's correct to realy trust your kids even in contradiction to your best assessment of the situation. The hand-licking s

One thing to remember is that sometimes it's correct to realy trust your kids even in contradiction to your best assessment of the situation. The hand-licking story is about tactics for diagnosis, but another angle is that (sometimes) it's OK to not understand something, to think your kid is wrong, but to let them have their way anyway. Missing a plane vs dirty hands? Trust the kid, find another solution (grab a towel, wipe hands on pants, take the germ risk, etc), and talk about it later as best you can. You don't want to let your kid be the boss of everything; you don't want to let your kid ignore your intructions or choose to do something fun instead of necessary work, but if your kid would rather stand there and do nothing while getting upset instead of doing some small work item, they aren't "cheating" you out of anything by getting their way.