She can be delightful and gorgeous and kind, etc. In school she is a dream and lovely to everyone. She's wonderful with her youngest brother, if not a bit over zealous sometimes, and she can play really nicely with her other brother. However, I am getting worn down by her picky, nasty behaviour mainly aimed at the older of the brothers. She'll walk past him and kick him, then pretend she didn't see him. When he's just done achieved something, she'll point out the things he did wrong. This afternoon she threw a shoe at him and then claimed she was placing it on the sofa next to him and he just got in the way. At bedtime she refuses to let him listen to the story I am reading if it happens to be the turn to read it in her room. The almost constant (at least that's what it feels like), nasty underlying behaviour is wearing enough but then we also have her ridiculous tantrums.
Tonight we have had a 45 minute tantrum because I didn't read the story in her room after another case of nastiness to her brother. She screams, weeps, wails, stomps, slams doors, follows me, etc. I really need ideas on how to cope with her when she is like this as each time it turns into me shouting at her (which doesn't help) and then literally hiding from her. I ask her to stay in her room, she follows me. I ask her to leave me alone as I am getting angrier, she follows me. I move myself away from her and come down/upstairs, she follows me. All I do is get more and more wound up and completely exasperated that she won't grasp how her behaviour isn't helping anything. Surely at 7.5yrs she should have better self control by now, these are the same fits she threw when she was 3! I know she is only 7 and therefore stropping is part and parcel, but it's these hysterical screaming fits I want to get rid of and her inability to calm herself down and stop behaving like a feral child.
Not even sure this post makes sense, but if you can find some then any advice would be great. How to help her reduce her behaviour, how to help me keep calm in the face of the storm, how to get the nice child at school at home (at least for a bit!) as well!