16 month old not eating much

[PumpkinAndHoneyBunny]

I was hoping someone could give me some advice on dd's eating habits.

She's 16 months, and roughly on the 75th centile for weight and 98th for height. I'm slightly concerned because she never seems to eat much for lunch, in fact nothing at all. Breakfast and dinner are okay and fruit snacks etc, but pretty much nothing for lunch. Is this okay? If not what shall I do to change this/make this better?

Here's a typical day:

5.30am/6am wake up - beaker with 3ozs of growing up or cows milk
9/9.30am breakfast - porridge with a fruit pot and some toast
11am -7oz of cows milk
1/2pm - lunch but usually eats nothing
3pm - something alike a banana and yoghurt
6pm - dinner usually a fish pie, or shepherds pie or something like that. Eats a big portion usually.
7pm - 5-7ozs of growing up milk in a bottle

Does this sound too little? Is this too much milk?

DD has just turned 3, and it's only in the last couple of weeks that she's started to eat breakfast, dinner, tea AND two snacks. Before then it was breakfast and either dinner or tea (not both, she'd eat one and pick at the other) and maybe one snack.

I wouldn't worry about it.

Really? That's reassuring. She will eat two meals a day (usually breakfast and dinner) but mil looks after her 5 days a week while I work FT and makes a huge deal of how little she eats. Her weight is good (I think) and is wearing some 18-24 month old clothes but mostly 2-3year old clothes (mostly due to height). She doesn't look scrawny to me and seems to eat a lot when she feels like it. Dh says she's self regulating but it worries me that maybe I'm giving too much milk and by this age she should be eating breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

Personally I would scrap the 11am milk. My ds has only had morning and evening milk since he was around 1, now 19 months, and he loves his lunch more than his dinner!
I wouldn't worry too much, but that's what I would try if you are really concerned.

I think if your DD is happy and content, and growing, then your DH is right that she's self-regulating her food :) my DD is a bit older and well under 50th centile, but even so sometimes refuses dinner after having eaten well earlier in the day. I have decided not to worry as you can't force someone to eat!

Looking at your schedule, I expect she just isn't hungry at lunchtime after breakfast at 9 and milk at 11. If you wanted to have her eat more then you could probably move breakfast earlier and/or cut down on the milk. But if your current schedule is working ok then maybe you don't need to change anything?