Horrid child

What do I do for my 8 year old girl? She’s a “middle child “ and totally unresponsive to any correction with logic but responds with harsh rejection and anger, but with emotional distress on my part she responds with deep empathy – like when i told her i was having a panic attack because she was being so hard to deal with that I couldn’t do the dishes she went and did them all and told me to relax! (So surprising to me but it gave me hope she does care!)

She often does ask for time alone and has expressed a need for more time but sometimes I don’t know how to give it to her when we are in the flow of activities and she’s being mean!

She’s so persistently unkind at school that male teacher has said that she’s quite hurtful even to him with her comments about “no one likes you, the other teachers at the school are all better than you etc” she has an answer to every correction with a sassy harshness and zero remorse. He will correct her and she will roll eyes and then after a time out will go back to normal till another correction when she will overreact.

The teacher has observed she comes from a core of anxiety about not being good enough and the only tool she has to feel better is to put someone else down – usually another student but even him!

Today she was sent to the office for the first time but it’s been a long time in the making. She’s also been generally unkind to children even at church taking the littlest child age 3 and telling her not to be friends with our little girl and pitting them against each other. It happens when I am not present and she claims that she doesn’t and it’s only my other daughters lying and that she’s really nice.

But I have noticed her take every action and twist it to make other people unkind in her mind & invents bad intentions to take offense at. Eg. my sister wanted to make my other sisters makeup prettier and they were leaving me out…

I have had 1on1 counseling sessions with her – she doesn’t see her harm of others but she has once agreed to focus on being sweet & kind. but last night when I tried to speak with her she again turned it on me and told me I was mean for correcting her; that she would destroy my Mother’s Day gifts and she hates me and some other insults including swear words.

I sent her to bed without talking with her or tucking her in – I said “there’s nothing I can help you with if you speak to me like that I will be available again in the morning & she actually did go to bed. How do I help?