Quote Originally Posted by playfelt View Post
Stop serving snack and only serve a drink - 4 oz of milk. Then it encourages the child to satisfy their real hunger with real food at lunch. For sure a child can survive just fine on eating mid morning and afternoon snacks and doesn't need lunch. Bet if you served veggies instead of crackers you would very quickly see how much child was not really hungry at snacktime. They do however need a drink of something mid morning. Also serve milk at morning snack and water with lunch so child doesn't have anything to fill up on besides the food. Then if they continue to not eat or only eat the starch portion of the meal so what not your problem. They will come around in time. This is a very common trait for this age group because they can control how much they eat and learn very quickly that it gets them attention from adults.
So true...all of this!
I aim to only do snack between meals if there is more than 3hrs between the big meals. And when there is then snack is 1hr after the previous meal and 2hrs before the next meal. I try to never give snack less than 1.5hrs-2hrs before a meal or they are too full to care to try and eat. I rarely-never give crackers for snacks. Snack is just a small bit of food to hold them over for the real meals yogurt (check your yogurt ingredients most are scary), veggies and hummus, a bit of fruit etc. It really does improve eating habits. If they know they can hold out for endless crackers they will. If you look at the food guide (though debatable whether this is the best meal plan for kids) preschoolers are only supposed to have 3 servings of starches a DAY. ONE slice of bread is 2 servings. Most children get wayyyyy to many servings of starches because they like them and they are easy to serve. Look at the salt content in crackers. It is ridiculous...no wonder kids prefer them!

Anyways...the quick fix to OP's original question is to not worry about the child skipping lunch. If you want to really see improvement then tweak how you serve snacks and meals and what you serve.