I won't buy his love

My new Year's resolution for 2013 is to raise my son cost-free for a year. On December 19, with the new year in sight, our son, Johnny, turned two. We were on holiday and avoided present-buying hype. Instead, we pulled into a garage on the day and bought him a cheap water pistol.

He was ecstatic. It was a weapon, then it was a tool for watering plants; no wait, it was something to feed bedraggled dogs from. The Hamley's stockroom couldn't have made him happier, or sparked his imagination more powerfully.

And that's when I had my eureka moment: It was all superfluous.

Clothes: a child's only requirement is to be warm and dry. We'll use only swaps from friends. Toys: ditto. Food: out with kiddy rice cakes, little cheeses and special squashes. He'll eat his share of the three meals a day we cook for ourselves. He'll have kitchen haircuts and activities concocted at home instead of at soft-play centres. I thought we can go a whole year without engaging in any kiddy consumerism, barring essential items such as medicines. Johnny won't even notice.

Then I started to wonder, am I the only one suffering from kiddy overspend? I thought about supermarket aisles devoted to snacks for babies and toddlers and parenting magazines full of ad s for the latest infant accessories .

No, if I was mad (and looking at the unnecessary spending I'd fallen prey to, it looked uncomfortably clear that I had been), then I wasn't alone. This was confirmed as I blogged my challenge. I was surprised by the range of people attracted to the idea.

''I grew up in a low-income family," wrote Laura, ''and know first-hand that cloth nappies and secondhand/hand-me-down clothes and toys never hurt anyone. I'm also careful not to get drawn in by advertising for 'must-have' items because a background in child care has shown me how few things children really need."

We know this already. Each Christmas, we wink at each other and say, ''All he wanted to play with was the box it came in." Yet each Christmas brings more flashing plastic.

There is a more complex, emotional dynamic to modern shopping, too. One woman responding to my blog recalled visiting a toy shop with her colicky baby and sweeping the shelves of toys and comforters that promised to ''soothe".

What happened to mother knows best? For lots of modern parents faced with adverts, blogs, magazines and shops, in moments of self-doubt it has become all too tempting to hope instead that advertisers know best.

But not every comment on my blog is positive. ''He's only two. He doesn't know what consumerism is," tweeted one reader.

Other readers worried it would be joyless and restrictive. That, I fail to understand. Did the author Richmal Crompton's Just William have less fun because his adventures were built of sticks and mud? Did I miss something, or didn't Veruca Salt's ''I want" bring her to a sticky end (Salt is the spoiled little girl in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

We are only at the beginning of the year, and are not experts. The only time I have tried to cut Johnny's hair, someone asked if he'd had an accident. Anything could happen. But however battered our resolution has become by next Christmas, I hope there is at least one empty cardboard box under the tree. And I hope it is still the favourite. - ©The Daily Telegraph Garlick's blog is at www.freeourkids.co.uk