Your son was me! Obviously he figured it out, for me, I hit a wall where I didn’t know how to study in college, so i struggled a bit and then figured it out. Looking back, I probably have some form of ADHD.

With my son, I focus on identifying opportunities to correct “bad” or suboptimal stuff. He’s usually getting marked down from being sloppy or rushing through stuff. He has 90s in core subjects, but ended up with an 80 in Health due to some shenanigans because of that phenomenon. It’s a good teaching opportunity.

My son figured it out in college. He quickly realized a BS degree wasn't going to allow him to do what he wanted to do and he knew he had to get into grad school. Then he realized grad school is a whole different ballgame from college and so his high school shenanigans weren't going to cut it.

Here's the key - he set the goal for himself. All I did was as I'd been doing, if that's your goal then I'll help you figure out what you need to do to achieve it. He ended up going to a grad school that was ranked in his field and got a stipend to boot. I can't take much credit for any of it because he largely figured it out himself and executed on it.