My friend's 13-year-old child is suspected of having Asperger's syndrome. He shows lots of signs of it, but doctors aren't sure. They say he's rebelious or has ADHD. He doesn't take changes well. For example, if you disappoint him by changing the time of a meeting or do something else than he expected, he'll make a fuss. He has very narrow interests and doesn't get that he hurts people by being abusive - it's their fault, e. g. he can be such to a disabled person. His mother has MS, by the way, he doesn't seem to catch this, for him she's healthy.
He really does badly at school, he has a huge backlog in learning, especially in math and languages. Average teenagers can be lazy but they can manage "around" their laziness somehow and have decent grades. As a poor student, he doesn't make any effort on his side to change it. He doesn't seem to be motivated to learn at school. He says that learning doesn't make sense. If he did, he would be at least average.
When one does his homework with him, he often gets distracted, furious, hysterical or even wants to make you do his homework for him. Spending time on TV is making things worse. He also doesn't believe he can succeed, it's hard to convince him that he's smart (but he is). It sometimes seems he doesn't comprehend any of the subjects we go through, he sometimes doesn't get the question. It feels more like he doesn't want to, because it doesn't make any point to learn.
It's strange that one day he does well and the other day he does really bad doing his homework. Same with grades at school - he sometimes does well and sometimes badly. Some people (e.g. his psychologist) say that he's manipulative. He may play a role of helpless but in fact he doesn't want make any effort because learning bores him.
He is a bit addicted to the internet and TV. He watches silly movies on youtube and from there possibly he took an unrealistic view on life. For example, that it doesn't require hard work, because on youtube he can't see all the boring preparations to do an awesome trick. The kid knows car mechanics very well, but doesn't get fraction and math overall.
Is there a way to help him go through school? It gets really bad, I have no idea how to get him out of this. How to make him believe that learning makes sense, while everyone tried most of the standard arguments on him, from money to "being able dreams come true"?
