T said something very rude to his uncle today. Later when I was talking to him about it, he put forth several reasons why, mainly boiling down to T seeing uncle yell at his two year old cousin. He sees this as mean. FWIW, while I really agree with T that uncle is way too harsh with his 2 year old daughter I have never said anything about it to T or as far as I know when T is in earshot. Honestly, I have chatted about it with both my brother (uncle's partner) and my husband. My brother blowing off a little steam to me and w/my husband, just us ruminating on how it seems to stress out my brother and how tightly wound he can be in general. T formed his opinion from his own observations.
There are a few truths here:
-T can't be rude to his uncle.
-My brother's family's parenting style is their business (the children are not being abused or neglected, just held to unrealistic expectations and my BIL tends towards yelling when his expectations are not met).
-I need T to not be rude to his uncle but also I need to not have T think that I am condoning my BILs behavior.
I have tried the "they do things one way, we do things another way". Honestly, we yell in our house too sometimes but for my BIL it's the first tool in his box and he is yelling at a 2 year old about doing things that are totally reasonable for a 2 year old to be doing. T is 6 and sees it plain as day and even articulated why he thinks the yelling my uncle does is different than yelling here "Cousinname is only 2", "Unclename gets mad really fast" and "It's not fair to only yell". Still I am cautious of telling T that I agree with him because I don't want him to feel like that means I am condoning T's rude behavior. OTH, I feel like I need to respect his discomfort with my BIL. WWYD in this situation? ETA: complicating the issue is that T is really tunnel vision here and only seeing this in his uncle and not anything positive anymore.