"That would be bad for me"

We got Sam's light switch cover thing so he can't turn on or off his lights. So he's no longer turning on his lights after his bedtime and reading or engaging in whatever activities he liked to do after bedtime. I can't remember if I've written about this, but now our problem is that he's getting up frequently and opening his door and coming downstairs. He does it like 10 times and doesn't end up going to bed for 45 minutes to an hour after he's supposed to. We've tried being gentle and leading him back to bed time after time after time. We've tried various punishments like we said if he got up again all his cars would go into timeout for the following day. Which happened. He got his cars taken away and we actually had a pleasant day the next day without the cars.

We tried holding his door shut. The first night we did that he screamed and screamed and screamed. The funny thing was that he was screaming, "MOMMY COVER ME UP!!! COVER ME UP!!!" which I had done many times already, but since he got up so many times I had enough. I held his door shut while he tried to open it repeatedly. This went on for maybe 10 minutes. The next night he asked if I was going to lock his door and I said I would if he tried to get up. He, of course, did, but he only got up and tried the door twice before going to bed. The next night he tried once, then not at all. However, last night he had a relapse and repeatedly tried to get up. Jason told him that he was going to take away his baboosh if he tried to get up one more time. We didn't hear from him the rest of the night.

Tonight we told Sam that we were going to take away his baboosh if he tried to get up. He said something along the lines of, "I have an extra baboosh." I said "No, we'll take them all away...forever. You will never see them again." He said in a very serious voice, "Ohhhhh, that would be bad for me." Jason and I stifled laughs at his serious demeanor. Later as I was getting Sam ready for bed I asked him what he would have taken away if he got out of bed tonight. He said, "My cars. Take my cars." Wow. That's serious. I reiterated that the baboosh would be taken away, not the cars and he got serious again. There were no problems with going to bed tonight.