The Session, the latest bag from Hard Graft, is a combination case and stand for on-ear and over-hear headphones. The exterior is made from soft, grey, semi-vegetable tanned Italian washed leather, while the interior is lined with rugged British cotton canvas twill.

This lining is sturdy enough that the Session’s base can stand on its own even with headphones resting on top. When it’s time to travel, slip your headphones into the bag and use its four push buttons to keep them nice and secure.

In this mode, the bag’s thickness and suppleness offer peace of mind that your high-end headphones are protected even when the Session is tossed into a backpack with all your other gear. And, like any good leather product, if you take care of the bag it will last you a long time and only gets more and more beautiful.

Get the Session from Hard Graft for about $237 USD.

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Like most parents, you feel this terrible tug.

On the one hand, you want to provide your child with every advantage. On the other hand, sometimes it feels like when you do that, you’re feeding an incredibly unhealthy characteristic in our culture.

For whatever reason, we’re living in the midst of an entitlement epidemic. Probably more than any other generation before us, our generation feels as though we have a right to things that used to be defined as wants, or even privileges.

Here’s how the cycle starts:

On the day your child is born, it’s easy to decide as a parent that you need to give your child every advantage.

So you compete. You made sure he had bright colors in his nursery and exactly the right kind of mobile to stimulate his brain, but now it’s an all out frenzy to ensure your preschooler can swim, skate, hit a ball, paint frameable art, read, write and speak classical Greek before his fourth birthday.

And don’t worry, because by the time you’re done with the race to kindergarten, the culture has taken over feeding the frenzy. Your child has now seen enough advertisements and made enough friends to believe that her every desire not only can be met, but should be met. The boots that every other stylish kid is wearing are not a privilege, they are a right. Or so you’ve been told.

And then other inalienable rights emerge: the right to a phone for texting, iPod touches, Facebook and so much more.

Somewhere in the mix, you found yourself realizing that you are tempted to pay your kids for every “act of service” rendered in the house, from emptying the trash to picking up each sock.

And you realize something is desperately wrong. And you would be correct in that.

So, what do you do to fight entitlement in yourself and in your kids? Here are five suggestions:

1.  Be clear on wants and needs. I joke with my kids that we owe them shelter, food and clothes, and I would be happy to slip a pizza under the door to their cardboard house any time they wish (they are teenagers, don’t try this with your 5-year-old, but you get the point.) Take time to explain what is actually a need and what a want is. Culture will never explain it to them. You need to.

2.  Reclaim special occasions. There is nothing wrong with not buying wants for your kids in every day life. Save the special things for special occasions like birthdays, Christmas and the like. You don’t need to indulge for no reason. In fact, you probably shouldn’t.

3.   Set a budget and let them choose. With back to school shopping and seasonal purchases, we started setting a budget with our kids early and then let them choose how they would spend it. They become much more frugal shoppers when all of a sudden they realize that money is limited and they can get more if they shop around.

4.  Establish an allowance and expectations. An allowance is a great way for a child to learn responsibility. We’ve encouraged our kids to give 10 percent of every thing they earn, save 10 percent, and live off the rest (the formula gets more restrictive the closer they get to college). Explain what gets covered and not covered out of that allowance.

5.  Be clear about what you will never pay them for. There are some things that you do because you are a part of the family. You can decide where that lands in your home. Make a list of responsibilities that no one gets paid for that you do because you are part of a family. To help with this, why not ask your kids what a reasonable list looks like? Involving them will help them own the decision. Second, make sure you follow up. And hold them responsible for what you all agreed to do. Otherwise you will be tempted to pay for everything or just roll your eyes daily and do it yourself.

Approaches like these can help raise kids who see life as a series of privileges, who live gratefully, and realize their responsibility to others.

How is our entitlement culture impacting your family? And how have you learned to battle it?

Carey is the lead pastor of Connexus Community Church, a growing multi-campus church near Toronto and strategic partner of North Point Ministries. Prior to starting Connexus in 2007, Carey served for 12 years in a mainline church, transitioning three congregations into a single, rapidly growing congregation. Carey writes one of the most widely read Christian leadership blogs today. He is the author of “Leading Change Without Losing It” and co-author of “Parenting Beyond Your Capacity” with Reggie Joiner. He and his family live in Ontario, Canada. Find Carey on his blog or follow him on Twitter @Cnieuwhof.

Tomorrow is the scheduled launch of iOS 8. If you are upgrading an existing device, here are some tips to make it easier and safer. If you are getting a new iPhone on the 19th, then I think these are even more important.

1. Delete every app you haven't used in 3-6 months. You can install them when you need them but every app slows down the migration to a new device. You also reduce the chances you will have a power-hungry backgrounding app you don't really want.

2. Turn on encrypted backups in iTunes. iTunes. Encrypted backups retain most of your passwords and it saves a ton of time.

3. Backup to iTunes. An iTunes backup restores much faster than iCloud.

4. Use something like iExplorer to download any voicemail, text test message logs or whatever you think you want to keep. Prepare for the worst case scenario.

Doing all of this stuff takes about an hour. Not doing it may take several days.

Three years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with my second boy, I was relieved. I already had one, so the immediate thought in my mind was, “I got this. I know boys. This will be my oldest son—version 2.0.” But literally, from the moment I was able to feel my second little guy move, I knew he was, in no uncertain terms, nothing like his brother.

Every moment since has confirmed what I suspected then. I may have two boys, but they are their own deal. I have one more sensitive, compassionate, and intuitive. He is a thinker, a learner, a great question asker and a budding evangelist. I have another one whose love language is teasing, whose first word was “go”, who runs and skips more than he walks, who laughs when he falls down and sees rules as more like an opportunity to make a joke than to actually obey.

They are an absolute blast on their own. Together…they are more like oil and water. We get glimpses of harmony, shared giggles, and (melt my heart) handholding. But more often I witness the playing out of a “fun fact” I recently learned of: Brothers under the age of seven fight every seventeen minutes. And it is my personal opinion that when they have been apart for most of the day, they feel the need to make up for lost time when reunited.

It’s exhausting—for me, the adult/peacemaker/referee. But I know it’s exhausting for them too. One wonders why the other won’t just lighten up. The other wonders why it is so funny to disrupt his very involved story telling. I imagine consciously or not, they see each other as so alien and feel to some degree, a sense of frustration. Family is complicated enough—but add in our glaring disparities and the fact that we are surrounded by each other all. the. time—and, the whole concept of family can start to feel like a cruel joke.

But several months ago I read a quote from Jeffrey Kluger that shifted my opinion on siblings from exasperating to endearing. He writes, “Siblings are the only relatives, and perhaps the only people you’ll ever know, who are with you through the entire arc of your life. Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most [undeveloped] form.”

He’s on to something. There is something powerful that comes from the sibling relationship. Something that can’t be replicated. The tricky thing is, though it has dizzying possibility, it isn’t a promise. It’s a gamble—it’s a relationship that has to be fought for both now and later—when the kids who share baths, bedrooms, and germs have outgrown the homes they come from and start to create their own.

It would be easier most days for me to let each of my boys do their own thing. To separate out their lives to a level of ease, convenience and quiet that sounds really appealing. Why break up the fight over that toy, when I could just buy a replica so they both have one? Why not hang with one and my husband with the other so both get individualized attention without threat, disruption or annoyance from the other?

That way would be easier.

But I know the quiet I am anxious for comes at the expense of something special, profound and slick—something that could slip away so effortlessly I wouldn’t even realize it until my boys were long grown and gone. The potential for something great. The hope for something lasting. A relationship with each other, in spite of each other, where they may actually manage to like each other.

We can’t force our kids to be best friends. But we can create homes and opportunities for them to learn to appreciate the things that make them maddeningly different and inspiringly unique. We can celebrate differences and facilitate dissimilarities. And we can let them know, always, that as different as they maybe, they are a gift. To us. And to each other.

Now hold on. My seventeen minutes is up and someone is crying.

Sarah Anderson writes for the XP3 student curriculum at Orange. She is married to Rodney Anderson and is mom to two beautiful bouncy boys, Asher and Pace. Follow her on twitter @sarahb_anderson.

In racing video games, a ghost is a car representing your best score that races with you around the track. This story of a son discovering and racing against his deceased father's ghost car in an Xbox racing game will hit you right in the feels.

Update: This story was originally shared in the comments of a YouTube video about gaming as a spiritual experience. (via dpstyles & @ryankjohnson)

(via dpstyles)