My extroverted feeler son inherited my math-music brain, which does not do visual spelling.
In second grade he had to take the state public school test. He scored over 90% in everthing except spelling: 3%. Impressive, even by my standards. My Ex, who at that time wasn't an Ex yet, said, "He just needs to read more." I said, "Doesn't work for me." I was an exchange student to Denmark about a million years ago. I went to the University of Wisconsin Madison because it had one of the three best Scandinavian Studies programs at that time in the country. I got a scholarship one summer to translate a book. I did translate it, doing 6 pages a day. About half way through the summer, my professor gently asked, "Why are we using British spellings?"
"Um." I replied, "For example?"
"Theatre."
"Oh, um. Right. I'll fix those."
It was completely automatic for me to copy from a dictionary because I KNOW I can't spell, but the point is that I didn't NOTICE the different spelling AT ALL. So I thought my son could read until the cows came home and he still wouldn't be able to spell his way out of a paper bag.
I spell by sound. I hear the word in my head and attempt to spell it phonetically. This often doesn't work. Had to memorize their, chlamydia and a host of other words. No one taught me rules, either. For many words, such as salmon, I hear two words -- the pronunciation one and the spelling one, the latter being phonetic. I worked on spelling after I failed my fourth grade test on all the states and capitals. I knew them but couldn't spell them. I was astounded that the teacher seriously wanted me to be able to spell them. Some people just have weird ideas about what's important.
My son's fourth/fifth grade teacher pushed him on spelling and he learned a bit. He also did Mavis Beacon typing and discovered spell check. In 7th grade he was writing a paper. I looked over his shoulder. "Did you want me to proofread that for you?" I asked.
"No, mom. I'm spellchecking it."
"Ok. Well, good luck with your paper on globule warming."
............"Ok, maybe you should proofread it."
So the extroverted feeler still has me proofread papers.
Feel free to correct my spelling, too.