“Ma’am, what time is the event for the fire fighters?” “Ma’am, we’ve got someone here asking about
the ECU.” "Ma'am, when do you want to schedule . . . " “Ma’am, how are we handling
accountability versus confidentiality?” “Ma’am,
who’s doing the briefing at 1400?” "Ma'am, are you listening to this conversation? What do you think we need to do about it?"
That's just a five minute look into my morning. Our morning meeting sets the tone for priority of business and my expectations for everyone. After putting out the instructions, there is still more that I need to do. It's incredible! I never thought there would be so much to have to answer in one day about little things. And then comes the practical joking and bantering that sounds some days like children bickering with the eventual, "Ma'am... did you hear that?" It's like hearing, "MOM!!! He took my truck!"
Stress levels have been high with a really high OPTEMPO right now, so asking me to make little decisions actually forced the words out of my mouth, "I am not making another decision for 50 minutes... fight it out amongst yourselves or wait until I am entertaining questions again." That so sounded like my Mom coming out of my mouth. I really thought I had a few more years before I started to utter those dreaded phrases that we all know happens. My boys will have already had me practice these skills on others much older than them. I've heard parents wish they would have learned some of the lessons for their teenagers sooner so they could try it again. I wonder if this counts as on-the-job-training in parenthood?
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