1000% I agree with this. Though we know very little about Chris' half siblings, they seem to be far more stable and successful people in comparison to Cole, Chris' other half-sibling, and Chris shares more in common with Cole than he does with David or Carol. He also shares more in common with Barb than with Bob.
Those Weston genes are strong.
Chris is very much his Mothers Tom-Girl, Chris had nothing to aspire too in his life apart from Barb.
Kids and let's be honest here tend to take a lot of inspiration from the adults that bring them up Barb was essentially a secretary who retired around the time Chris should have entered the work force or gone onto more education and Bob was retired for much of his life so he never saw anyone really go out to work and bring home the Bacon, and out of the Barb / Bob adults Bob was more likely to be stern with him and Barb was more likely to coddle him so he gravitated towards her as a path of least resistance with lots of fuzzy-wuzzys.
Going off his
"A Week With Christian Chandler", it seems he was taking normal classes. I immediately have doubts about his honor roll since he claims to have a trigonometry class. Though, if he was taking tard classes, he might not readily admit it since he was dripping with disdain for the other speds at the time.
I think Chris was just given that sort of thing for Good Behaviour not the quality of his work, we don't (or at least didn't) have that sort of thing when I was in Secondary school here in the UK but at the end of most years there was a little award creimony for each year group so if someone got perfect attendance they got a little prize and a certificate, or if someone had done something really good outside of school like raised money for charity etc they got a merit certificate, it was mostly just a nice way to round out a end of year afternoon and pretty much everyone got something.
My guess is Chris got his Honour Roll and thought it was for something like his Art or Music lessons but it was for something basic like Perfect attendance, 100% homework returned on time, no overdue library books, etc, etc, and when it wasn't for his Art he chimped out and knocked away the guys hand who was giving it to him and ran off to cry because he didn't get what he wanted / thought he was entitled to.
It was likely given to him as a simple anyone can do it kinda of thing so the Special Ed student had something nice on his record etc.
He prefers “easy” and “right now” over waiting. It might have also been in the back of his mind that it could have been another scam. Barb, he knows, is a real person.
That's the easy way to get him to do anything in the short term give him a goal with a varying reward - Cary this bucket over the hill in 5 minutes to get some water and bring it back for £1m in cash or take the long route around the mountain get the same water and bring it back in 20 minutes but you get £100k he'll chose the £100k option as he thinks it's less effort.