I would strongly recommend they get him evaluated by a neuropsychologist or a developmental pediatrician. They are really the only doctors who are going to be able to do the full amount of testing/assessment, plus they will provide a full report and recommendations for what the school can do to help the kiddo.
I second epoh on this - it sounds like your dn's parents are acting (at the moment) based on fears of what can happen at school. Some of those fears are unfounded - the school *can't* make them medicate a child and can't diagnose a medical disability. My advice is that they need to refocus their worries and efforts by concentrating on what their ds needs for *life* - not for school. It sounds like he is struggling with *something* and no one really understands what at this point. It truly could be *anything* - and a neuropsych and/or developmental ped are the professionals who can most easily help to *start* untangling the "what's up" puzzle.
It can be scary thinking your child needs help and it can take a long time (and may cost $) to get the private evals - but the knowledge gained through those evals is crucial both for parents to understand what is going on and how to remediate/accommodate/etc... *and* having the evals gives the parents important and credible information to use when advocating at school. Just as a brief example, before my 2e ds was diagnosed in 2nd grade, his teacher was beyond convinced he has ADHD - and I'm sure if a school *could* require a child be medicated she would have been greeting him at the door each morning with a huge pill
He doesn't have ADHD, and medicating for it would not have done him one bit of good... as well as it would have deferred us from discovering the disability that was really behind his extreme anxiety.
You mentioned homeschooling - homeschooling can be very helpful in getting out of a situation like your dn is currently in, and might be very helpful for him in many ways - but I would still recommend seeking the neuropsych or dev ped eval. Homeschooling to avoid a situation that is troublesome rather than homeschooling (or continuing in public school) with the knowledge of what's up and trying to learn how to work with/through/remediate/accommodate it are two very different things - and if you don't figure it out now and work toward whatever is needed to help with it now, he's only going to be faced with another situation later on in life where he's potentially unable to cope.
Best wishes,
polarbear
