MY DAUGHTER'S eighth birthday is imminent. She wants a Nintendo DS Lite. Several of her friends have them and, whenever we visit, she's transfixed. While I don't wish to be a killjoy, we've endured years of cajoling and bargaining in order to coax our sons away from their PS2/PC, and I can't face embarking on another eerily similar chapter. It's a modern dilemma: whether to accept that a child should receive what they want, or what we want them to want.

We want her to have a new piano. She is learning to play and loves her lessons; she is certainly not dragged along, weeping into her music case. Our old piano, acquired for free, has virtually expired. The top layers of some of the white keys started to come off, and although J and I felt terribly clever supergluing them back on, the glue somehow seeped further than it should have, so said keys now play together in clumps. Only one octave is truly playable. It's quite heartbreaking to hear our daughter struggling on.

J is dispatched to look at pianos. I'm seriously worried. This morning, our thirdborn mentioned that "small presents are usually the most exciting" and that she has decided "to hope for just one thing so there's a better chance of getting it". Eek. By no stretch can a piano be described as small. Still, do children really know what they want? When one of our sons was around six years old, he declared that he wanted nine red setters.

J calls, saying he's found the perfect model which can be delivered in secret on her birthday, after she's left for school. We plan to wrap it up with a whopping great bow on top, but I still fear disappointment. "You know she really wants a Nintendo?" remarks a friend. Our daughters are close pals, and it seems they've been discussing the forthcoming birthday at school. "She reckons it's only fair," my friend adds, "after the boys got new mountain bikes and mobile phones." I am horrified. The bikes were a necessity; even we tightwad parents had to admit that their old ones were so diddy as to be laughable. Does our daughter perceive that we favour her brothers? "I know about youngest child syndrome," my friend adds. "I never got over my parents refusing to buy me a skateboard when my big sister had a brilliant one. It was always hand-me-downs for me."

Maybe she's right, and our girl is past the stage at which any old trinket will do. (Hang on - what am I saying? A piano isn't any old trinket.) Plus, I'm wary of choosing a present in order to mould a person into what we want them to be. It says: "You're not good enough as you are. Prepare to be improved." One friend recently gave her eight-year-old an enormous times-tables poster to stick on his bedroom wall, which struck me as rather overzealous.

Another friend admits that she likes her men wild'n'woolly - hunter-gatherer types who, instead of coming home with a DVD and a few beers, are more likely to slap a freshly-caught salmon and a clutch of rabbits on the table. To coax her partner in the "right" direction, she bought him a book about hunting and foraging. He is happy to spend his evenings watching TV and eating crisps. He is unlikely to fashion arrows from twigs and birch resin. Likewise, J would be on a hiding to nothing if he presented me with a sewing machine plus a clutch of Simplicity patterns in the hope that I'll run up our entire family's summer wardrobes.

I'm really stuck now. The piano has been ordered, and the prospect of also presenting her with a Nintendo DS is beyond ridiculous. You can't set such a precedent, or the following year a child might be "disappointed" not to discover a pony plus several cuddly tiger cubs tethered on the lawn.

On her birthday, I walk my daughter to school, explaining that her main present will be waiting for her when she comes home. "Does it end in o'?" she asks hopefully.

"Yes!" I say, relieved.

Agh. So does Nintendo.