NOT every parent is as indulgent as I am, and not every family has the hoarding gene which dictates that nothing will be thrown away until it has passed the I haven't seen it for a decade I guess it can go test.

But don't tell me that there aren't other homes with other children's rooms stuffed with the fads of yesterday: bedraggled My Little Ponies, grubby Care Bears, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Barbies, Action Men, Megadeath Centres, Ninja turtles.

There they lie, alongside the badly made doll cot that broke after a couple of years, the discarded paint sets, the toy telephones, the toy pram that served three children, the indestructible Fisher Price ride on toddler toy, the make up doll's head that makes the place look like a murderer's den, the good, the bad, and the indifferent toys: a monument to consumer childhood. And an indictment of me?

This is a good time to take stock of the family toys, just before you plunge into the madness of looking for the last Toy Story Talking Buzz Lightyear/ Teacher Barbie/ Talking Barney in town. You know the kids don't need these toys, but they want them; and there are thousands of us foolish enough to yield to the pressure rather than watch their little faces fall on Christmas morning.

In our hearts, we don't believe that children would be just as happy with an empty box and the wrapping paper as with the expensive contents.

The truth is, children do want and need toys. The truth is, a lot of parents love buying toys, indulging their own childhood nostalgia. And the truth is, toymakers have come up with a cornucopia of pretty exciting toys to choose from indeed, you would have to marvel at their devilish ingenuity in creating new products every year, even as you're cursing their hold on your child's imagination.

At Christmas, the toy issue gets serious: should you do a massive clear out to make way for new toys? finally get hardline about the heavily hyped, hard to get toys? Buy the toys you've decided they'll like instead of the ones they've asked for? Are there basic toys that every child should definitely have? Why do children need toys anyway, and do they really get emotionally attached to them?

Angela Canavan, co ordinator of Information Services at Barnardo's National Children's Resource Centre in Dublin, is in doubt that toys are important, because toys enable play, and play is vital for children's development. You can of course make the best use of household objects for play, and there is a movement in some creches and nurseries to do just this, to give small children the experience of other textures than the ubiquitous plastic that most toys are made from. But toys can make parents' lives easier, as well as promoting children's physical, intellectual, creative, social and emotional development.

So what toys do children need, according to Canavan? In a baby's first year, musical toys, rattles, mobiles, activity centres, even baby books to stimulate their awareness. Children aged from one to two and a half need toys that develop mobility, manipulative and motor skills, the toys they pull or push, ride on toys, stacking and nesting toys, and eventually, Duplo. At all stages, she says, they should have music and tapes. By the time children are three to five, they enjoy role playing, which is where toys like prams, dolls, hospitals, playhouse, fire engines and the like become important. They'll need chubby crayons, sheets of paper, paints, jigsaws, playdough for creative development, matching games to develop cognitive skills and probably a bike or trike.

IT seems that there is no need to feel guilty if you have provided your children with a wide variety of toys: they need them. As they get older, children will like toys related to the hobbies they like, although it's pretty certain that toys such as roller blades (or skates), bikes and computer games will be universally popular. The new computer games, and electronic games generally, often decried by parents, are actually a good addition to the toy repertoire, thinks Canavan: "they teach children strategy and quick response time and how to think on their feet, as well as some computer concepts."

But do modern children have too much of a good thing? In many homes, probably yes. But the answer isn't to toss them all out, pronto. Canavan recommends that you revolve toys, putting away some, and getting rid of others - but only after waiting for a while to see if your child has noticed that they've disappeared. (Don't assumed a neglected toy is a forgotten toy: Mary's teenage children still regularly charge her with gross insensitivity for giving away to a poor child a toy dog on wheels that had lain neglected in their yard for at least two years.)

At Christmas especially, many children suffer from toy overload, and very young children can be mesmerised. It's a good idea to put toys away for several months, adds Ms Canavan.

KEEPING toys under control is hard work for Gerry and Ruth, a couple with four children aged from three to 15. "Basically I cruise the house with a black plastic bag when they're not around, mining my way through their bedrooms," says Gerry. "Anything that's heavily advertised on TV you can safely put into the black bag after two weeks of purchase and send for recycling." (He avoids the furry toys, in which they invest most of their affection.)

Ruth admits that the family dog has helped with the regular cull of toys: he has decimated the once large population of cuddly toys. But no sooner had one huge purple boy bitten the dust than the postman arrived with a vast parcel: one of the children had won an enormous cuddly gargoyle from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There are still too many toys in the house, but now Ruth, who works outside the home, has given in to things she can no longer control: "I've stopped trying to pick up jigsaw pieces, and I throw out any books that are scribbled on or torn."

And she confesses that Santa shopping is usually a compromise between what the children really want, and what last minute shopping will allow. But it seems likely that her three year old will get the cuddly talking Barney he wants to go with the plain old cuddly Barney, that he, like most other Irish under fours, got last Christmas.