Does this sound like bullying to you?

It doesn’t sound like bullying at all. It sounds like a very complex parental/child relationship that is experiencing a difficulty. It’s OK to be curious about it, but I don’t think you should internalize their situation. It’s between them.

No, it just sounds like family dynamics to me.

Hard to tell in my opinion. I’m not any sort of psych export, but here’s what I think:

If he constantly makes fun of her or tries to embarrass her, it could be very manipulative or bullying from her point of view. The only way to know is to actually ask your niece how she felt (I am NOT recommending you ask her) and if she launches into a list of things her dad does that make her feel inadequate or bad, then it might all add up to bullying. It depends on the person. Your niece might brush it off with no problem, or she might be more sensitive and it negatively impacts her. Your uncle might have no intension of trying to bully her, sometimes what is a pebble to one person is a boulder to another.

So this is her great uncle? Sounds like unwelcome teasing, which is not really bullying if he stopped when she told him to. If you feel bad about your reaction, tell her.

I don’t really think he should touch her unless it’s consensual, that can be creepy even with family. Otherwise it sounds like typical teen pouting vs playful uncle trying to cheer her up.

I took it as a father and daughter. Cindy’s uncle with Cindy’s niece.

Teasing can fall under the umbrella of bullying. The literature on bullying in school age children often talks about teasing among girls, while boys sometimes it’s more physical, but it can be just verbal bullying among boys too.

Here is an article I found by googling https://www.understood.org/en/articles/difference-between-teasing-and-bullying but when I mentioned literature, I meant I’ve been reading about this for at least 20 years.

I agree with @KNOWITALL about the touching. If she’s a teenager then even between dad and daughter it starts to get weird for a dad to take liberties touching. If it’s an uncle then really stay away unless you are sure the girl wants to be touched. I’ll add in that a tickle, which seems fun, is in my opinion often abusive. Laughing from being tickled was painful for me I HATED it. I don’t want to be poked either.

I think kruger_d is right, you can apologize for your reaction if you would like to clear the air with her.

Scary..maybe he IS touching her a little too much and we don’t know where he WAS touching before she got angry either.
Watch out for abuse ( pervert attention from an adult male to a child).

It sounds to me like an interaction for the father and daughter to work out between them.

Cindy’s niece would be the child of her sibling or sibling-in-law. Her uncle is the sibling or sibling-in-law of one of her parents. So, not father and daughter, but two generations apart. In fact, they could have those relations to Cindy and not be related to each other at all.

@Jeruba Ah – You’re right! Sorry about my goof!