I am assuming "inventive spelling" is common in Kindergarten in most school districts?

I didn't start learning English until I was in middle school, at which point I was already proficient in writing in another language so learning English spelling was a totally different game for me than it is for my kids.

Seeing DS5 will be using inventive spelling really worries me though. He's the type of kid who once he learns doing something one way, he's really hard to switch. I just can't imagine him learning to write something the "wrong' way just to relearn it correctly later on. I just don't see that happening!

Am I worried about nothing? To me it just feels really strange to not encourage kids to spell words correctly right from the start? Is this really common? If you have kids who like to follow their rules and are hard to retrain, how did you handle it???