She is good at nursery, but is often very tricky at home. Mostly this is defiance and disobedience, which is annoying but manageable. But we are having a lot of 'stupid' directed at us when she gets told off, plus a good bit of lashing out physically. The sanction for this is time out, but this doesn't really seem to stop her. I am worried that we are not in control of her and can't really work out to establish control. Rewards, incentives, positive praise etc etc all work for a while, but nothing seems to work long term. She reacts very badly to being disciplined, and generally with try to change the subject, avoid eye contact etc if you try to talk to her about h behaviour calmly. She is very hard work, and I feel like I am not parenting her very well. This has been going on since she was about 2 and a half, and things are better, but progress is very slow. Dd has one sister who is 18 months old, and is doing fine developmentally as far as I know.
She craves attention all the time, never seems to learn rules, is impulsive. She hasn't really developed empathy very much yet. She is also very loving, sensitive, funny, highly creative, good at arguing (!) and we try very hard to focus on the positive, but this isn't always possible when she is pushing her sister or chasing the cat.
Any observations or advice most welcome.