I too don't portion control my kid unless it's sweets and junk, which neither is around much. But when it comes to pizza (which I don't consider junk simply because I make it from scratch and know that it's healthy) I don't portion control.

Basically I provide the food and my son eats when and how much he likes.

I would stick to your guns. I honestly wonder (and if I were you, I'd ask this of an attorney), if your ex would be able to bring anything against you for forcing your child to eat his veg. Seriously, how much more fit is he as a parent for feeding a six year old family sized chips and his very own pizza? Some people do consider that child abuse.

I tend to agree with Glamour Girl that it's your house, your rules. If you don't want to be as rigid as that, as another option for the chips, as soon as he arrives, have him portion them into sandwich bags and tell him he can have one bag per day while at your house. That way he is not being totally deprived of them, but not eating a whole bag at once.

The bin is a good idea to keep healthier choices on hand. Also, set a good example for him. If you feel you have to give in to his request for pizza or McDonald's, let him have it, but don't eat it yourself. Continue to eat your healthy meals while he's eating his choice. Or, if you have him for 2 days, tell him he can choose his meal for one of those days, but eat your meal choice the other days, and stick to it.

Thank you everyone for the extra input. He doesn't visit again until the weekend after next but I think I have a solid plan now. Which is at least giving me a little piece of mind. We'll head to the grocery store when we pick him up, let him pick out a few of his snacks, if he chooses one of those snacks can be the chips he brings regularly from dad's house. Then I can make a bin(s), but portioned and he'll still have to ask to get a snack. I can put a small portion of the chips in the bin. For major problem meals he can eat what we're eating or do a PB sandwich.

-izzyboomama the whole fear for that actually came because a father had a psychologist (in a custody battle) say he was an unfit parent because he didn't take his kid to McDonalds when his kid threw a tantrum about it. So it sounds wacky and out there, and it's probably just the one case where it's happened and then got national attention.. but the fact that it's happened at all does kind of scare me. Realistically I don't think his dad would ever do that, but I have a bad habit of worrying about irrational things sometimes. It kind of goes along with the depression and it gets extremely hard to fight off the thoughts. Having a real example for what is an irrational fear just tends to make it harder. Theoretically me knowing it's irrational should make it easy to dismiss, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way for me :/

Hopefully he'll learn some portion control himself as he gets older. I'm not entirely sure he's ever had it.. that or I may have gotten bad advice from his pediatrician. When we transferred to solid foods he was eating a -lot- then too. To the point where I actually asked the pediatrician how much a baby his age should be eating. Pediatrician originally answer just until he was no longer interested in food, but after I told him how much kiddo was eating he agreed not that much. I have tried talking to him about hunger now, but if he'll still say he's starving after a large meal, so I'm not sure he gets it.

I'd just like to mention, since I've had inside knowledge about a few things that have shown up in the news: The story is NEVER the whole story, and you can't count on what you're reading.

Unfortunately I can't give any real examples for confidentiality reasons, but I'll use an example I heard about but have no inside knowledge about:

I read an article about a pregnant woman who bought travel medical insurance, flew to Hawaii, then had to give birth there by an emergency C-section but the insurance company refused to cover her. Apparently the insurance agent had told her verbally that she would be covered for her pregnancy if something went wrong. At the time the first article came out that's the only information we were given, and the overwhelming response from people reading the article was that she'd been lied to, and the insurance company was wrong in denying coverage.

At the time my thought was "Hmm, interesting. But the insurance company would have no legal grounds to deny her if that was the whole story."

Sure enough, a few weeks ago in a random discussion, someone mentioned to me they'd read an article saying she started having problems soon into her vacation, but the actual C-Section happened after her policy expired. The plot thickens! I just looked it up now, and an article says she had the C-Section December 10th, but her policy expired November 9th. I have to wonder why she didn't try to extend her policy. Or if she did, why didn't she tell the media that? Surely it would have been in the insurance company's better interests to fly her back to her own country for treatment (she was from a country with universal health care), rather than extend her policy or cover the issues that began in Hawaii. Maybe she couldn't be moved, but in my experiences there are allowances for that in travel insurance policies.

Now, any given piece of information here could be incorrect, presented in a biased way, or missing a whole lot of context for privacy reasons or other reasons. But the notable thing is that because of privacy and legal reasons, the insurance company is far less able to defend itself in the media than the couple can defend themselves. The insurance company can't explain in detail what the woman's medical problems are or what agreement they made with her. But she is free to explain the policy she signed, and what her problems were, and can withhold or share information at will.

Anyway here's what I'm getting at: Regarding that father who was called an unfit parent because he didn't give his tantrum-throwing kid McDonald's, you can bet for sure there's more to the story than you're hearing.