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.
I guess that explains DD's school's approach, where they were asking the kids to write before they'd been spelling enough to do so, and just letting them use creative spellings.
This is not the best approach for a perfectionist gifted girl, BTW.
