My son's (who will be 3 next week) daycare provider approached me today and was inquiring about how we handle discipline at home with him. She indicated that when he is not following directions and they attempt to redirect him he either laughs at them or repeats everything she says. We experience this behavior at home and I have yet to find a tactic that works all of the time. We have tried ignoring these behaviors and trying to redirect by explaining that his actions are not appropriate or as a last resort we put him in the time out spot (which happens to be his crib because it is the only time out spot that he will stay in).

I'm not sure if this is just "normal" behavior for this age but his teacher indicates that when he does this his friends also start doing this behavior and then she has a whole classroom behaving this way which is disruptive.

I'm not sure if any of the following factors in as well but I have noticed in the past 2 weeks he is starting to have temper tantrums again much like when he just turned 2. We haven't seen these tantrums in a long long time. I restarted his Zyrtec about 2 weeks ago because of his seasonal allergies. He used Zyrtec last year and I didn't notice any behavior changes then but maybe this is contributing or maybe he just feels crummy because of the allergies (poor thing is sneezing and his eyes are all puffy). He has an older and younger brother and sometimes I wonder if he is craving attention from us. We do the best we can but it is hard with 2 working parents and 3 kids.

Just looking for some other perspectives and/or advice that maybe we have not thought about.