No good deed goes unpunished, especially well-intentioned ones.

What would you do if a favor you did for your tutor’s family backfired? One guy recently asked for advice on how to handle this on Reddit. Here’s what happened.

AITA for letting my tutor’s son eat too little?

My (19M) tutor taught me English from the age of 12 to 17.

She’s the reason I managed to pass the English part of my university entrance exam.

We still keep in touch.

That’s an inspiring connection.

Last week, her son(16)’s leg was badly injured in an accident.

Yesterday, she asked me if I could visit him with some dinner since she couldn’t cancel classes.

I bought pork fried rice with a banana as a snack and iced latte.

This is an incredibly kind gesture.

The guy often told me coffee actually makes him sleepy and that he prefers drinking it later in the day.

He ate the entire banana and drank the coffee but only had a little bit of the fried rice.

An interesting diet for sure.

He said he’s too worried about his future footballing prospects to eat more (he’s currently a striker for his school’s team).

I tried to tell him that he will be fine and eating more could help him recover sooner but he snapped at me.

Told me I’m “a bookworm like [his] mom” and “couldn’t understand” what this sort of accident means to an athlete.

What’s this guy’s deal?

So I didn’t press the issue.

His mom called me and we talked.

She was upset I didn’t get him to eat more, saying that I’ve always been a bit of an older brother figure to him and he would have listened if I insisted.

Way too harsh of a response from both the mom and her kid. Let’s see if Reddit agreed.

The comments were overall reassuring.

Some offered some important perspective.

And reframed the situation.

Others reminded him that there was little he could do.

One person even felt the issue was much larger.

You can lead a kid to fried rice, but you can’t make him eat.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.