When I was a little kid, I was always excited ? as most little kids are ? by large collections of toys. Whether it was a friend’s toy chest seen for the first time, or the wholesale toy treasure chest at the dentist’s office, there to reward us for suffering through the terrifying torture of the mechanical chair, I was always amazed when I saw such riches. Everyone gets this feeling at some point in their life. I suppose it is what makes us like stories of pirates and treasure chests when we are growing up. Maybe it is the fascination with the objects of playfulness, or perhaps it is a simple acquisitiveness that is genetically bred into us. Whatever the reason, we want it, and we want it all.
My parents were very smart people, but they had an unusually psychological orientation. Some parents buy their children presents all the time to reward them for being good, but my parents took it in a more systematic direction. They bought bulk lots of wholesale toys and kept them stored for special occasions. It was a smart way of doing things. In general, they weren’t the best toys. They were wholesale cheap toys, bought from Chinese manufacturers and shipped overseas. Nonetheless, what they lacked in quality, they made up for in variety and quantity. There were wholesale plush toys, wooden trains, plastic squirt guns, and even action figures. My parents never kept them under lock and key, but we knew enough not to go looking for the wholesale toys ourselves. That was explicitly forbidden.
Because they were cheap wholesale toys, my parents could afford to be rather generous. As a matter of fact, me and my sister would receive a wholesale toy several times a week, provided that we behaved. My parents were pretty smart about how they did it. They didn’t explicitly bribe us, and never offered us the promise of a reward. If, however, we behaved well, we would often be surprised. We never knew if we would receive a wholesale toy at the end of a particular day, but we knew that we certainly wouldn’t if we didn’t behave. This variable reward system kept us constantly in line. BF Skinner would have been proud of my mom and dad! Not only did they prove how well conditioning works, but they did it with very little negative feedback. All they needed were a few bright shiny wholesale toys for some rather acquisitive youngsters.
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