um, I want your problem...

My pediatrician (and other books I've read) claim that kids will self-regulate and therefore we as parents should not worry when they go on eating binges or strikes. You may want to increase protein intake, as that helps signal satiation centers in the brain. If your kid is drinking an unusually high amount of fluids, you may want to talk to your pediatrician about diabetes.

Yeah. My niece is a occasional eater. Whereas my nephew eats everything you put in front of him and then asks for more. It's tough managing both of them.

I have that problem and it is driving me nuts. My solution has been to push fat/protein (not bad fat, but you know I will give them whole milk yogurt if I want to make sure the snack sticks with them until dinner time, for exs, or nuts) and also to start putting my foot down at more than one between meal snack. While it is true that kids self regulate they also manipulate, even if only sub consciously when they are really young. There is the genuine hungry and the procrastinating hungry; I have just started being a bit more rigid. They hear "you should have eaten more at dinner/lunch/breakfast" from me a lot. I will say though I let them eat as much of the snack as they want, i.e., until they are full (or is the snack is semi-healthy, make them switch to something healthier, but let them eat until full at any rate). I personally would not limit them there, I think they do self regulate.