Logistics question re: serve food, let them eat it or not

My 2.25 year old is a good eater when at daycare. At home, he'll eat a couple of bites and declare himself done. He eats what we eat. We serve him a small amount of everything, we can be pretty confident he'll eat some of the protein, any carbs are hit or miss, and he will not touch a vegetable, but we give them to him anyway.Meals are no-drama. We serve it, we eat it. If he says he's done, he can get up and play, but Mommy and Daddy are still eating, and won't play until we're done. Sometimes he'll come back and eat more, sometimes he'll come over and want to sample what we're eating (the same as his), but some days he doesn't eat much at all.We eat early (5:30), then he goes to bed at 7:30. Around 7, he gets a yogurt pouch, which we find gets him an extra hour or more in bed, and he doesn't wake up starving the way he used to.If he refuses anything for dinner, he still gets his yogurt pouch, but my husband normally gets anxious about the fact that he didn't eat anything, and will make him a bowl of hot cereal, which he'll usually eat half of. He'll still eat his yogurt.My husband is worried that if he doesn't eat anything, then he'll wake up in the night hungry, and we do not want him to think that eating in the middle of the night (or at 4:30am, when he used to wake, starving) is OK.So far, our son hasn't seemed to connect that he can refuse dinner and then get cereal an hour later, but I feel like this is only a matter of time. It doesn't happen often, maybe once every 2 weeks. We're also conscious of the fact that he's currently cutting the 2nd of his 2 year molars, so chewing is a little sore right now.Just curious what other parents do - serve it, if they eat nothing then they get nothing? Do your kids wake earlier or hungrier in the morning? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2oesJ8u