This sounds similar to what my DD9 went through last year in school; the class went through an exercise that was supposed to teach kids that everybody had strengths and weaknesses, but it ended up sounding more like an exercise in labelling people. She was a little bothered by that ("I have trouble making friends"), but was more bothered later in the year when the very unsupportive teacher enlisted the school psychologist to label her even more thoroughly. After a lot of discussion with DD about why she wouldn't be able to go back to that school next year and why we weren't having luck getting her into another school (which was the very negative report prepared by said psychologist, with the help of said unsupportive teacher), I ultimately talked with her about it pretty directly and said, people think you have these disorders (in this case, ADD, AS, and OCD) because of the way you behave, including not listening to other people's words, and if you change those behaviors they will stop thinking those things about you. I'm not sure this was the best way to handle the situation, but in DD's case I think a lot of her behaviors are more consistent with the gifted 'side-effects' discussed for example in James Webb's Misdiagnosis book, and that she can if she chooses improve her behavior in a lot of ways so that she doesn't have so much trouble getting along with other kids and adults. Now she has just started in a new classroom with a (so far) wonderfully supportive teacher and we are hoping this year goes well. So I'm not sure this would work for your DS--it sounds like the only thing he really mentioned was dysgraphia, so maybe he would just need some accommodations there?? It's great that *he* recognizes he has strengths (and has your support!), so maybe if he can understand that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses he'll come around to not feeling bad about being different, and enjoy that he has some really cool strengths.
