MotherofToddler, thanks for sharing the interesting detail. From my limited research, the way I understood it was that children will start to call some of their scribbles as letter and later as words and in fact, complete notes and differentiate it from artwork between 2 and 3 years of age. However, they are still not writing recognizable words. But I think you are right in that children start to write simple words such as their names probably before they start reading. I was more concerned with the huge gap in writing/ spelling ability vs reading ability in my dd. thanks.
In the book it's more talking about kids learning to write and spell words phonetically before reading them. The author does not mean kids just pretending to spell or writing their own names but going through a process where they spell things wrong first (like the author's example of a 3-year-old writing HMPT DMPT for Humpty Dumpty), then learning to spell more things correctly, and then learning to read last.
