You can lead a horse to water...
There is this constant tension in the life of a full-time tutor: to what extent do you push/ force/ cajole/ incentivize/ threaten your tutees to work/ study/ put forth any sort of effort/ not destroy their lives, and to what extent you let them make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons? In general I'd say we try to lean toward the latter, but some students -- one of my 6th grade tutees in particular -- are so academically behind and emotionally troubled and just generally out-of-it that allowing them to "make their own mistakes" is equivalent to giving up on them altogether.
That is why I call said tutee every night on the phone to help with his homework. Tutee resents this with a passion and it is a major source of conflict in our relationship, but he just can't/ won't/ doesn't get the work done on his own.
Also, though, he doesn't get it done with me. Instead what he does, as of late, is works through every question with me, eventually producing the right answer (also complaining/ insulting me at regular intervals), then we pause for the amount of time he needs to write down the answer, then we move on, until the whole assignment is complete... and then the next morning when he turns in the assignment he hasn't actually written anything on the paper.
So you can lead a horse to water and you can open the horse's mouth and you can pour water into the horse's mouth and you can close the horse's mouth and then keep watching the horse until it makes a swallowing motion, and you can promise the horse a reward if it drinks the water, and you can inform the horse of consequences for not drinking the water, but no, friends, you really cannot make it drink.