The discrepancy between his oral spelling and his written spelling suggests that it is the insertion of the physical or visual-spatial process of writing that is the problem, and not dyslexia, stealth or otherwise. He is also very young, and may still be working on attaining automaticity in handwriting (developmentally, not necessarily as a delay), which can introduce undue cognitive load, resulting in inconsistent or incorrect written spelling, especially in connected text (versus in isolation, on a spelling test). Either way, I would keep an eye on this, and consider an OT consult or eval as a starting point.
aeh, this is just what I think, too. I really can't see dyslexia in him because he is so excellent at reading (in particular, he can do things like sound out weird scientific names faster than I can), but I feel like there may be some kind of "skip" happening physically or perhaps visually, I guess. Or it could be just developmental? It's weird, though, to see him spell those words wrong.
I should have mentioned that he is sporty. Large motor is good. Doesn't seem very DCD in that sense. It's like, specifically hand and finger stuff that seems poor. We're still struggling to get him to use his fork consistently. But, really, handwriting is not awful. Just average, maybe slightly below. To me it looks meh because his sister wrote like a Palmer manuscript book, but when I compare to other kids, he's okay.
Visual-spatial deficits, I don't know. He's awesome at chess, which seems visual-spatial. He's knocking back 3rd grade math just fine.
