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Anderson Cooper’s Dyslexia: The Kid Who Pretended to Read

Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor who grew up with dyslexia, in black glasses at a 2018 awards lunch
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.

Anderson Cooper is a CNN journalist and one of the best known faces in American TV news. He reads the news to millions of people.

As a boy, he used to carry books around and only pretend to read them.

Cooper has described what he had as a mild form of dyslexia. He does not make it bigger than it was, and we will not either. But his story is a good one about what the right help can do.

School and the hard part

Cooper grew up in New York City and went to a private school there. His brother was a big reader, and Cooper wanted to be like him.

So he carried books too. He has said he would just pretend to read them, because he had trouble making sense of words and letters.

He also tried to hide it. He has said he remembers being worried that other people would find out.

Later he said that school can be a very lonely place for a child with a learning disability.

When he found out

Cooper found out as a child. Understood.org says teachers at his school noticed he was having trouble with reading, and that led to a diagnosis. We have not seen a source that gives his exact age.

After that he saw a reading specialist several times a week. He has said he went after school in New York and in the summers on Long Island. He remembers it as going to the reading doctor.

One thing she did was get him to find books he really cared about. That gave him a reason to keep going.

Part of the help was learning to type. He has said it made him a really good typist by third grade.

Anderson Cooper’s dyslexic advantage

Cooper does not call dyslexia a superpower. What he talks about most is the people who helped him early.

  • Early help. Understood.org says he credits his reading specialists for his success in his career. He has said that having teachers who understood made all the difference in his early life.
  • A love of books he chose himself. Being pushed to find books he was excited about turned reading from a chore into something he wanted to do. He went on to become a strong student and to graduate from Yale.
  • Typing. A skill he picked up as part of his reading help is one a journalist uses every day.
  • Knowing how he works best. He has said he finds it easier to read things printed on paper than on a screen.
  • Speaking up. The boy who hid it now talks about it in public. In 2010 he hosted a lunch for the National Center for Learning Disabilities and spoke about his own dyslexia and why schools need the right support.

It has not gone away completely. He told a CNN writer in 2019:

“I still do have trouble confusing some letters and numbers.”

Anderson Cooper, CNN, 2019

What we take from it

We like this story because it is not flashy. A kid was faking it with a book under his arm, some teachers noticed, and somebody helped. He now reads out loud for a living, which we think is a pretty good comeback.

Sources