My almost 11-year-old would love a portable television set with a built-in DVD player. My soon-to-be 13-year-old has asked for PlayStation 2 please (a snip at only €269.99, minus the games).
And that's just for starters. With 47 days still to go to Christmas, children all over the country will be coming up with lists of "must have" items they would like Santa to bring on December 25th.
The countdown is on, and parents are facing into one of the most obscenely commercial times of the year. The pressure on families is immense. You rarely hear children talking nowadays about what they are "hoping" to get from Santa. It is very much what they "are" getting. And woe betide Mr Claus if he doesn't deliver on the big day.
Most parents are overwhelmed by "pester power", which has its root in the outrageous levels of advertising and marketing aimed at children. The Christmas TV ad campaign started in September. The children were barely back to school, for God's sake. The reality is that children are hugely influenced by marketing, and brainwashed into believing they must be supplied with a host of consumer goods to fit in.
It may not have reached this extreme here, but a recent US survey reveals that the average American child aged between 12 and 17 will ask nine times for a product they have seen advertised until their parents give in.
For parents of so-called "tweens" (those aged between 12 and 13), the problem is even more intense. Ten per cent of them ask their parents more than 50 times for products they have seen promoted on TV. The US study revealed that nearly a third of children surveyed admitted feeling pressure to buy items such as clothes, shoes and CDs simply because their friends had them. They wanted to be the same. More than half confessed that buying certain products made them feel better about themselves.
Of course parents can say No. We don't have to give in, we don't have to bow to commercial pressure. It is not that simple, however.
By taking a stand and insisting we will not buy the toy all the other children in the class have, or the designer clothes every child must be seen in, we risk having our children ridiculed and ostracised by their peers.
In families where both parents work, there is the added guilt of not being at home as much as they would like. So at Christmas they shower their children with the gifts they've asked for. Guilty here as charged.
I brought my daughter shopping for her Christmas clothes last Sunday. She is not a demanding child, far from it. But she casually mentioned that some of her friends were not only getting an outfit for the big day itself, but a second one for Christmas Eve or in case the family was invited to a party.
I was horrified. We agreed amicably that one special outfit would be enough, thank you very much. And I still couldn't help feeling I was a bad mother because I hadn't indulged her.
It's no joke for many families who are already dreading those credit card, bank or even moneylender loan repayments in January and February just so their children's Christmas can keep up with all the others on the block.
This week the Children's Rights Alliance called on the Government to move in the Budget towards reaching its target of eliminating child poverty by 2007. But what is "child poverty"? I strongly suspect that what is regarded as child poverty today is much different to what it was years ago.
In an item on poverty on RTÉ TV News last week, one woman complained not that she wasn't able to put food on the table for her children, but that she found it impossible to provide them with all the things their friends had.
The Christmas madness has gone too far. But we say that every single year, don't we? What happens to our annual New Year's pledge to spend less next year and give more to charity?
I don't know how Christmas can be rescued from the claws of gross commercialisation. It would take a unique alliance of parents, children, teachers, the media and State institutions to agree on initiatives to restore some commonsense.
Let's face it, such a nationwide "Save Christmas Campaign" is unlikely to happen.
One small start, though, would be to follow the example of Sweden, where TV advertising aimed at the under 12s is banned. It is this kind of advertising that has spawned the child consumer disease "I want, I want".
Last year, when we lived in Beijing, it was refreshingly different. There was no build-up to Christmas and we were not bombarded by festive TV ads or shop displays. We searched the streets of the Chinese capital for the sight of a Santa Claus and hunted high and low before we found a shop that sold a Christmas tree.
But while we missed the atmosphere of Dublin, it was a relief not to be tortured by the commercial monster. And guess what? The children's Christmas wish lists were far more modest than usual.