We didn’t vacation a ton when I was growing up, but when we did it was – involved. Car trips from New Jersey to Orlando. Camping experiments in Acadia National Park. Two-week bus tours with 15 family members around most of Italy and a small piece of Switzerland. Not quite beach-front relaxation; we were out to really experience things. We were pack your sandwiches and read every single placard in the museum people.

I’m the oldest of four girls, so any family vacations were really more like group expeditions. Coordinating six people moving in unison without the use of walkee talkees or those ropes that pre-school classes all hold on to when they cross the street is a hysterical task. We wore like colors and assigned emergency meeting points, but these were not low stress occasions. If someone was afraid to go on Space Mountain, someone else lost out. Also Dani could get motion sick on a play ground swing and Sara was allergic to bees. Naturally we had our “moments.”

I can’t remember when the policy was instituted. Maybe after the fourth day of pouring rain when Mom stormed out of our tent and declared we were going to a hotel, with or without your Father! It might also have been after I dropped Dad’s laptop on the marble floor of the Hotel Cicerone in Rome, where – fyi – there are no Apple Store Genius Bars. I’m not sure if credit belong to my Mom with her Masters in Early Childhood Development, or my Dad the Ad Executive, who could entice the devil out of hell with a clever enough campaign. Somehow, by some stroke of combined parenting genius, they developed “Your Moment.”

The rule was that everyone got one over the course of the entire vacation. It could last for a collectively determined amount of time (the family voted on 30 minutes max), and was exercised at the sole discretion of the person. Your Moment was your Moment – if you wanted to cry or carry on or sulk or give everyone the silent treatment, that was your prerogative, but you could only do it once – and once you did it – you’re Moment was up. Hitting, kicking, biting, and cursing were not allowed. You could physically distance yourself from the group, but not so far that Mom or Dad couldn’t still see you. And your Moment was to be respected. No matter how ridiculous or wasteful it seemed to the rest of the group, Your Moment was your choice, and no one was allowed to make fun of your decision to use it because you couldn’t grab a stuffed animal out of the arcade machine after three tries. If that was your breaking point, so be it.

After years and years of playing this psychological game (which at the time I considered such a steadfast policy that I once used my Moment because Dani made fun of Alex’s Moment which was obviously completely against the rules!!), I can’t remember many of the actual temper tantrums. But what is absolutely burned inside my brain is the sound of either of my parents and any of my sisters saying, “Um…is this going to be it? Is this going to be your Moment?” They would pause (even the baby – it was priceless) and then launch into the lynchpin of the Moment tactic: “Because if you really want this to be your Moment then that’s fine. It’s up to you. But then that’s it.” Pause, dramatically. “So, if I were you, I would think long and hard about it. Maybe save it for something more worth it.”

9 times out of 10 we would stop, pout, and walk away – defeated and yet unknowingly victorious. It was parenting brilliance.

I ran into a particularly difficult client day eight of the Festival. It was 9:30 in the morning on a cold-ish, rainy-ish day that makes everything seem more out of control. She was at the end of her rope having spent a week dealing with their company President, a 75-year-old Irish man intent on having his product displayed in every corner of the Festival – bar or otherwise. It wasn’t me she was freaking out at – just the situation at large. Not enough bar signage, not enough branded glassware, the President would be furious, how are we going to fix this?!?! All the while flailing her blackberry at me and threatening things like nervous breakdown and removing the liquor from every venue for the rest of the Festival!!

I grabbed her blackberry out of her hand, walked her to a quiet corner, and said, Kate, let me tell you a story about my Family.

She decided this wasn’t going to be her Moment. In two days the President’s wife was coming and she might need to use her Moment then. Good thinking, I said, you’d feel like a fool wasting it when it wasn’t really necessary. Spot on, she said.

I know my parents tricked us into behaving. They created this sickly genius sibling competition of who could use their Moment last, if at all. But it worked – so well that I’m now using it as the cornerstone of my client management process.

God they were good.