Hidden in these gestures is the worst part of all about it: she's dooming the kid to a life of bad habits which will be near impossible to shed. By equating swim class = McDonald's, the kid is going to associate any physical activity as deserving some kind of caloric "reward" which will MORE than offset the number of calories burned by the activity. So not only is the parent allowing the kid to eat in a way which will cause it to be morbidly obese by adulthood, she's setting him up to be VERY unlikely to ever lose that weight, even if it wises up and wants to fix the damage caused by terrible parenting. The fatty will likely think "I need to exercise to lose this weight! I should go swimming; I remember being thinner as a kid when I did that." And what always comes after swimming??? MCBEETUS OF COURSE! They'll think they've "earned it" from all the "hard work" they've put in. The result: fatty just ends up fatter than before, gets discouraged, cries "guhnetix!" and quits exercising. Actually... I'm pretty sure it was the last generation of parents that followed this pattern exactly and led us to the current "HAES" obeast generation.