Okay, well. Here's my opinion.
We try to keep the incoming stuff to a minimum, but it's hard when relatives send Xboxes and iPods. I've asked them to dial it down in the past, and they've done a good job of it. So this is good.
My kids are used to having a lot of nice toys. However, we also make a huge effort at purging as a way of reducing their attachment to material things. Oddly enough, the Christmas lists this year are super-short and none of my kids is really dying for something, apart from a Calvin and Hobbes book my 11-year-old wants. "Cell phone" has topped the other two lists, and I'm all for it.
I think it's normal to for kids to want more expensive things as they get older. Let's face it: it's hard to spend hundreds of dollars on a toy for a pre-schooler. Whereas there are umpteen things costing that much that a twelve-year-old would appreciate. One thing we're careful about is to talk to our kids about how most other kids don't have what they do. I think this helps.
That is one reason why I would hesitate to enroll DS/DD in a private middle school next year because they would be exposed to some extremely indulged children simply because their parents can afford it.
I don't think I'd use this idea to decide against a private school. Overindulged kids are everywhere. If you live in a high-income area, your public schools will likely have a lot of them (e.g. I knew a very-high-net-worth guy with a paid-off house worth at least $2 million whose teenager complained about how poor they were because so many kids at her public school were outrageous conspicuous consumers. Not the first time I'd heard this about the schools in that district.). A lot of people who send their kids to private schools struggle to afford the tuition.
