[gally1]

Hi, I'm new here I'm looking for some opinions from others before I stick my foot in my mouth. My husband's sister has a 9 year old son who.....can be described as a holy terror. He is very impulsive, he's completely fearless, he's not interested in 'rules', he's defiant and extremely mischevious and he does the silliest and naughtiest things that I've ever heard a child have the nerve to do. (sometimes when his mother tells us what he's been doing, they sound like tall tales). My husband and I don't exactly think that his sister and her husband (the holy terror's stepfather) handle discipline (and I'm including positive reinforcement in that) very well. And we're tempted to butt in completely and say "hey, this is what we think". But we don't want to step on anyone's toes - would you intervene and say something - and how would you approach it? Her husband sort of has a personality of not liking to be...advised/to have something pointed out that he's perhaps not handling well.
Our main concerns are that the poor kid doesn't get much of a response when he does something well, or when he behaves well. And also when he was about 5 they turned, basically out of desperation (they have a lot of frustration with this kid), to spanking. And the kid has received quite a number of spankings since then (I think it's safe to say it's not working, although they say it gets his attention) - the other 2 kids in the house (stepfather's bio-kids) have never been spanked - I get the impression from the kid that this does nothing at all for the step-father-step-son relationship (recently it's always been the stepfather who spanks). Dh and I are not 100% opposed to spanking, only about 90%, I think there are rare occassions where it's effective. One of our children was spanked on one occassion about 10yrs ago...and to be perfectly honest, dh spanked the holy terror last summer while he was staying with us after he snuck off on his bike about a minute after being told that he'd be taken out for a ride soon but couldn't go now by himself...). But we think that they're relying on it too much (we can kind of understand WHY, when we hear that he's been deliberately knocking red wine on the new carpet or when he's been squirting his sister with the hose...inside the house...), but they need more strategies, he's getting older....and what are they going to do when he doesn't 'accept' being spanked?
Personally, I adore the holy terror, I love him - possibly because I don't have the frustrations of parenting him very often! but mostly because he CAN be so sweet and charming. We have him to stay quite a lot during vacations, during summer - the first few days are usually a frustrating disaster which consist mainly of him being disciplined by dh. But he does end up playing by our rules (he likes dh a lot more than his stepfather I think) and we have fun with him, he's an energetic whirlwind of fun.(...they have been down the adhd route with him too, nope, it's not that) So we know that he WILL respond to more positive consequences/discipline, to talking about expectations of his behavior, to losing/having to gain priviledges - all without spanking him (....except for that one time). But then it's just back to his regular home life - we have tried the casual "when he behaved like that at our house, we did this" sort of thing but it seems to fall on deaf ears. We just feel like he deserves better guidance in his home life... and I think that the most worrying part for me is that I think that the holy terror finds it to be a tense environment to live in, which leads to him acting out more.
How would you approach this with dh's sister and husband? Without beginning a family feud.
Thanks for any responses!