It’s important to accommodate those in life who may be less fortunate than you, but where does a line get drawn?

What would you do if you were essentially tasked with helping raise someone with little life experience, through no fault of their own?

One guy recently took to Reddit to ask advice on this exact situation.

Here are the details.

AITA had to tell my roommate I’m not their parent

For some context, I (25M) work in landscaping and that’s where I met my current roommate (20M).

We became friends having most routes together, and I found out a couple months in he was actually homeless and sleeping in a parking garage.

Tragic how common this is.

What I gathered is he had a really messed up life and aged out of foster care where he was for most of his childhood and ended up homeless when he got to a certain age.

I had some space so I allowed him to live with me.

Sounds like the original poster is a good friend.

He pays his portion of the bills, he cleans up, he cooks for both of us sometimes.

He’s actually been the ideal roommate.

Hmm ok, so what’s the problem?

Where I’m frustrated is, he needs a lot of help with things and it makes me overwhelmed.

He doesn’t know how to do most things like set up a bank account, file taxes, drive a car etc.

He’s constantly asking me for help with adult things and it’s frustrating that he acts like I’m his parent sometimes.

Frustrating for sure, but is it really his fault?

I didn’t mind him asking how to use a washer and dryer but even all this time later he can’t remember how to do it sometimes and will still ask.

He’s looking into new jobs but doesn’t know how to do a resume or apply so I have to help.

There are so many more examples that I can’t think of right now.

This is a tough one for sure.

Recently, he’s had some tooth pain and he asked me how he can see a doctor for it.

He bugged me about this for two days, I finally told him that he needs to put effort into finding things out himself and I’m not his parent.

Yikes. Not cool.

Don’t get me wrong, I DO feel like TA but I’m also overwhelmed having an adult living with me that looks to me for every little thing because they don’t know how to do most things.

I’m writing this here because I’m wondering if I should apologize for what I said he seemed pretty upset but didn’t say anything back.

Seems like the poster knows he’s in the wrong here, though the amount of pressure on him is understandable. Let’s see what commenters had to say.

Most folks were torn.

Some offered perspective shifts.

And validated the poster.

A few suggested some advice.

And a few took a practical approach.

Sounds like no amount of life experience is enough to take on this one.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.