Your DS8 sounds a lot like our DD9--including the spaciness and scoring high in math (though our DD is probably not as advanced there)--unfortunately we have still not figured out a great solution. Our best luck has been in stumbling upon some really awesome teachers who have made their expectations clear, given reminders and then if necessary followed through with a consequence (that was explained/reminded about with the reminder). When applied fairly and consistently, this kind of approach works great with DD--if she gets unpredictable (to her) consequences, or arbitrary ones, or ones that have to do with the behavior of others, she wigs out and then usually (especially with that sort of teacher) gets in way more trouble. Last year was a disaster, but fortunately she is resilient. We also decided to help her work on her strengths and so are doing EPGY and IMACS on our own time and dime--she loves them.
Finally, DD was 'tentatively' diagnosed last year by the school-affiliated psychologist with ODD, ADHD, Aspergers, and dysgraphia--based from what I can tell pretty much entirely on questionnaires from the awful teacher, who went above and beyond the call of duty to get DD excluded from the school for this year. (Very frustrating, especially since the previous two years at the same school had been with absolutely wonderful teachers, but moving on....) I have read James Webb's Misdiagnosis book and think the correct diagnosis is probably PDD-NOS based on satisfying several of the ASD "A" categories but I don't think any of the Bs or others. We did try to go to a gifted/2e specialist to get a correct diagnosis going forward (for the next time DD applies to the next level of school), but there aren't any near us so it becomes difficult logistically. We're still planning to do this but will try this year to work on building up DD's social skills in the supportive classroom she is fortunately now in, and try to work at home on exercises from "Raising Your Child's Social IQ," and talk a lot about various social situations as they arise. I'm hoping for the best but it would be nice to have something less cobbled together as a plan for the future. We've only been at private schools so far, which was not the original plan but since we figured out there were various issues we thought it might work better, so we haven't had to deal with IEPs etc. yet. However, with the dysgraphia, DD writes well but it takes her a lot longer than you would expect, and she said she 'hates' writing. We tried keyboarding but I think that is also affected by the dysgraphia, or at least she hasn't been terribly enthusiastic about it, so we still haven't figured out a solution there either. One suggestion/ accommodation is if the teacher will allow her to write answers in incomplete sentences where practical, so she has less writing to do, and let her do written assignments at home (where I can do at least some of the typing if she dictates, or try to use voice recognition software although that has also been difficult because it doesn't pick up her voice very well). Just FYI, she took piano for a couple of years but ultimately stopped because she didn't like doing the fingering the way the teacher wanted her to--so I think that is a related issue for her.
Best of luck to you and your DS!
