I completely understand! I am going through the EXACT same thing at my house with SS15. I don't think you are being unreasonable at all. I think you should buy what you always buy, and he will just have to find something to eat.

I noticed I was buying more junk now, since SS15 is here to please him, but I decided this is going to end, I am stocking up on fruits and veggies and if SS15 doesn't like it, too bad. He won't eat ANY fruits or veggies at all. I bought a family pack of chicken nuggets for SS15 and the package was gone in a day. Then last week I was at BJs and there was a huge thing of 48 poptarts on sale so I decided to buy it. DS10 likes them once in a while, but DS10 also eats VERY healthy, he loves fruits and veggies. Anyway the package of poptarts was in the house a day and a half when I looked at the package and 22 of 48 poptars were gone!!!! My son had 2 and DH had 2 so SS15 ate 18 poptars in a day and half!!!! So, I took the rest of the package and put in the trunk of my car....after that I am done with buying ANY junk food.

i disagree:

"I think it's fair to make some reasonable accomodations for him but I don't think he should be pressuring us to the point that we change the way we live our life while he's here."

your house, your rules. if he doesn't like it, TUFF TITTY. i think it is very nice of you to make the accomodations that you do for him, but his utter lack of appreciation and respect for your life style would cut that off ASAP.

I totally understand how you feel. I am always having to buy CERTAIN brands of things because otherwise SSs will not eat. They are so entitled they think we should buy them whatever they want. And if I do buy the junk food they want, they eat it so fast I can't keep it in the house and then they are complaining that there is nothing good to eat. How often do you have him? It's like we are in between a rock and a hard place - you don't want the kid not to want to come over - but at the same time you want to have rules and not have it be so disruptive - no real good advice here - just wanted to say that I can relate.

I understand where you're coming from. You will have to make some small adjustments when Skid comes because that's just the nature of things. But you should not have to disrupt the entire household, turning major components, like eating habits, topsy turvy just because SS is there. Yes Kids like junk and some is okay in moderation but it sounds like he's nothing but Junk and the consequences are already there-overweight.

I have similar issue with SS8. He's 20pds overweight for his height. He'll eat an entire medium pizza by himself, always wants 2-3 servings at dinner, eats adult meals--never kid meals when we go out to eat. He drinks full sugar fruit juice by the 64oz every 2-3 days. He bites his tongue and fingers often when eating b/c he shoves food in his mouth so fast. He breathes loud, gulps, swallows hardly chewing. He'll have crumbs everywhere, under his eyes, everywhere like a toddler. It's disgusting. Who allows this--DH. SS8 is embarrassed to take his shirt off at the beach because of his stomach. His upper thighs rub together. He has asthma. But neither DH or BM really address it from an overall perspective. They acknowledge it should change but when he's here, DH fights any attempts to do so!

BM tells us to watch his portions, give him vegetables, etc. She doesn't do that but tell us to. So when he's here, I try to bake meats (he doesn't like it). DH and I don't have weight issues as we're active so we do eat some junk but we burn it off. And normally I would fry foods but when SS8 is here, I bake instead. I make sure there's a balance of a grain starch and a green vegetable on his plate. I limit breads. I always have plenty of fruit in house. We may go out to eat once or twice but I encourage Dh to order off kids menu--he won't. SS8 usually eats more than us and plus off of DH plate.

On his BM side of the family, they are big and unhealthy. BM's two brothers are obese and 1 had heart attack at just 40yrs old. They have heart issues, blood pressure issues, breathing issues. BM had a lapband and lost 75pds but she's still at least 200pds & starting to gain back. We don't know what's on his Bio-Dad's side from health stance as we don't know who Bio-Dad is. So this kid has some odds against him as it is and any effort from me to work around it, to feed him like a child is pushed aside. I will stand back and watch this fiasco unfold--tired of fighting it.

I was, and am still to this day, a very picky eater. I was given a bowl of chocolate icecream for dinner if I did not eat the dinner on the plate, seriously. I never ate vegetables. Even as an adult, nope. In my early 30s, I started trying. I ate a couple salads and raw carrots. I cannot do potatoes, green beans, or any bean actually, or anything. I can tolerate corn and rarely would tolerate a few peas. FINALLY, at 36, because my first pregnancy, I am able to make myself tolerate it to eat servings of peas, corn, and even cooked carrots if they are chopped up small into the peas (gag on cooked carrots because of the texture by themselves; throw up beans; gag on potatoes from texture). I drink V8 fusion and take vitamins. I would love to be a skinny, special healthy exercise eater, but I am not. All I can do is try my best now.

My point is, at 16, he is the way he is from his home. It is probably infuriating to him, like it was for me, spending the night/weekend at a friend's house that ate "healthy" and they looked down their noses at me (I felt like). I never wanted to go back. They said "eat what we eat or don't" and "gosh you eat fat" and "eat a lot".. and all that stuff said above about "bad diet" and "eat too much", but you cannot just change overnight to someone else's eating habits in a night or a week and that can spill out to resentment and that power struggle.

Yes you have the right to cook only what you want, yes it is your house, but if this was someone other than SS and you were not looking at "my power my house", would it be the same?

Not trying to knock your rights or your perspective, but I know what it is like being that kid, and really it sucks. Being told you eat wrong, you cost too much to feed, you eat too much. Really, why wouldn't they be loathsome towards the person that is putting them down? I know I was really resentful of the woman that was like that to me. YES, I wanted to change, but being raised in the hotdogs and milkshakes, it is not possible (for me at least) to change to eating bruslesprouts at that point just because the people that own the house I am forced to stay at eats that stuff - even if I do get to eat "normal-to-me" a few days of the week.

I hope that can help at least maybe where you can see a little from his point of view, and maybe if you reach out to understand more, he will be less defensive (which comes out as hateful, not wanting to do things with you all like movies, because perhaps he feels like you are the one pushing for control and power over him, when he is visiting there and is 16, not 6).

Again, I am just trying to show you the other side, which I did experience, to help. There is no reason for such a power struggle. Cook your dinners like you always do and give the teenager the encouragement to try it, but the option to be able to eat something he considers "normal" if he can't stand it. And yes, after a couple days at the woman's house, where all I had to eat was a dinner roll at the meals because I couldn't do baked beans, potatoes, brusslesprouts, whatever other bean, I was pretty hateful and pissy and hungry, and I did eat what I could (three things of poptarts, because I was hungry and my body did not recognize two servings of corn and a roll as sufficient). So that is really the big problem; that power over what he is going to eat there. Let it go. Try coming at it from a positive angle instead of a force/power angle. Offer him to try it, encourage him, when you all exercise, happily invite him along positively rather than 'you said you wanted to lose weight', because that approach certainly did not work with me, it just made me feel worse about myself and more disdain for the woman doing/saying it.

I really bet you can dissolve this power struggle and could really be a positive role model for diet/exercise in his life.

It's the exact same thing here with SS14 in our home every other week. Over the last three years, here's where I stand:

I don't buy anything specifically for SS14, that's SO's job.
I don't cook when SS14 is in our home. If I do, I have to hide what I'm putting in the pot/pan.
My lunch items have to be things he won't eat, or hidden from him.

I understand this, my SO and I get called "mean" because we don't freely give out candy, chips, sodas, cookies...etc to the kids. They get WHATEVER they want @ other parents house during the short time they are there.We have a couple things in the house that are "junky", but mostly out of sight. The sugar and crud seems to affect their behavior, so we try to keep it away. My daughter does not seem to much care, and on the rare occasion she asks for something I will let her have it, providing her behavior is in order. SD is showing signs of being a compulsive over-eater, and it's worrisome. She is 8 years old and a stick figure, but with her habits forming, it won't be for much longer. She eats twice the amount of food that I eat as a grown adult. She shoves food into her mouth and cleans her plate in minutes, with the anticipation of getting seconds or whatever is left after everyone else eats, and I have heard her romanticize how great it was when her grandma let her wash down a roll of Thin Mints with a huge root beer float (family weight problems, anyone?)It's got to be hard with a teenage kid, though,having the ability to get the junk food on his own, if he wants to, and I am guessing his other family does not value healthy eating. As far as for the sulky behavior and making everyone else miserable, that is a power/control thing, and you can't put up with it. If it's bad enough, start thinking in terms of "If this was a stranger I met on the street and they did/said/acted the way this kid is acting, what would I do?" Also, he is old enough to get a part-time job to support his junk food habit, you don't need to supply it for him.