To recover from authoritarian parenting in the later stages of your life you have to replace the habits that are put into you by your authoritarian parents by better ones.
“Nurturing” for many people implies caring, protecting and sheltering. However, if your son is a gender-typical boy, then “nurturing” may mean something different.
Toys and things become stuff when they are in excess, when they have no intrinsic purpose in the daily life of the child and when the child ceases to show any interest in them.