As far as behavior modification goes I don’t think your being quite as creative as some programs out there. we got cake too and were limited to inviting I think 6 friends (one tables worth) to join. It wasn’t a given of course, you could easily be denied it if you weren’t progressing to their standards. I do remember that the invite limit put a bit of pressure on you to exclude friends and in essence publicly rank them, but I don’t consider that a very extreme use of behavior modification, although I guess it might depend on what the program is asking for from the kid in exchange for friends and cake.
My program applied it in some unique ways, and I don’t think it is all that hard to imagine that practitioners of BM would instinctively make use of the naturally occurring positive and negative anchors and rituals that are commonly learned in our culture and distort the meanings for effect. Cakes, birthdays, friendships, you need to be careful with behavior modification. Some things are not just a carrot on a stick, although this is the lesson taught. You can’t blame the kid for having a distorted view of those things after that, that’s the reality he was shown. Again, I’m not saying SUCK IT had to deal with that, but it has happened.