In 2010, on the eve before my 19th birthday, I wrote a blog post about my childhood encounter with my older cousin’s Ouija board. Eight months later, Amanda passed away. Now, shortly after the 13th anniversary of her death, I’m finally finishing the story I started.

What seems to be just as instrumental in building up (or tearing down) our kids’ self-esteem is so much subtler than I could have predicted: While the words are important, the intention behind my words probably matter more. Children are little detectives, constantly analyzing our tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language to convey meaning—and all it takes is a quick roll of the eyes, an escaped sigh, or a fake smile through gritted teeth to turn “Try it like this instead,” into “You never do anything right.” This is chaos theory at its finest, and I am the butterfly.