Just found out our kid is kind of awful

I'm going to admit I'm a total snoop. Whenever our middle schooler is acting up or in a funk I check her messages to see if I can figure out why. This is a double edged sword, though, because while I do often spot the problem, I can't address it directly because I don't want to reveal I was snooping. This mostly comes in the form of seeing problems where I'd like to support the kid, but this time is different. I always knew she spoke differently with her friends, more cursing, more boisterousness, more bravado. But this is the first time I've seen her mean side.She recently had a falling out with her best friend of 9 years. The reason she gave is that this other girl in school lied to the friend that our kid was spreading rumors about her. This is gossip that was actually stated as fact to us by our kid in the past. The best friend is "stuck up". The best friend is "too rich", etc. So we sort of though, maybe she *is* actually spreading these things. Because the breakup has been crashing our kid's mood I decided some text snooping was in order. What I found was another girl asking ours to stop telling people her questions are dumb in class. Our kid confirmed she was telling people this and told the girl she was seeking attention and wasting people's time. This all confirmed to us that our kid is, in fact, a mean gossip and, let's face it, a bully.Let me clarify some things. In front of us our kid is the kindest, most ethical person around. She has real empathy. When hearing moral problems she's usually spot on in what's right and what's wrong. The media she consumes shows girls and women as friends, not petty enemies. And, most important, when the kid tells us this gossip about other kids at school we defend the other kids. We never agree that this person is awful, or that person is dumb. In fact, a few weeks ago she told us about this very kid in class who was asking "dumb questions" and we told her everyone learns differently and at a different rate so you can't judge. We're doing everything we can to build a kind person, but it seems to have failed.So the question is, how do we fix this without revealing we know who she's fighting with and why? She's about to enter high school and with this attitude she will have a dead social life on arrival. If her friends of 9 years have had enough, why would new people want to deal with it? She's lost this friend and she won't admit it's her fault. We want her to be a kind person. And, please, no answers regarding gender reductiveness. Girls aren't "just this way". I know I wasn't, nor were any of the girls I grew up with. This has to stop. Thanks! via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2OhU05M