LO is 2 years 11 months. He used to listen and do things when he was much younger (like between 1-2+ years old?) and that was heaven. Timeouts also worked very beautifully. However, for the past weeks/ months, he doesn't do things immediately at the time when he was told to. This includes everything - from cleaning up toys, putting clothes on, to putting his underwear and pants on after using the potty, and washing his hands. The latter one really drives me crazy. He would literally run away and run around with no pants/underwear on and his hands unwashed and not returning until I got mad and made him come back and wash his hands for him...etc. Well, he would EVENTUALLY do it, but it would be after 20 minutes, and he considered that he has listened.

We tried time out, which used to work, but nowadays he would rather go sit on his time out spot than washing his hands! When told he needs to __________ (fill in the blanks on activity that was requested to do), he runs to his time out spot, sits there and smiles. Gah!! Then when he really doesn't want to do timeout and I put him there, he gets up and walk away. I tried to put him back but he just kept getting up and walk away.

Our preschool teacher suggested us to take away his toys when he doesn't listen. So far it has been somewhat working (at least he hates it for us to take away his toys!), but I am not exactly sure he gets the relationship yet (as in, when I say you better go wash your hands now or I have to take away your bus, he would go run to his buses to prevent me from taking them).

Do you have this problem? What do you do?