Larry Koenig develops national profile as parenting expert

Baton Rougean Larry Koenig has become a nationally known expert on children and discipline. These days, Koenig is trying to use his experience with children to improve literacy skills among students who have had little exposure to books.

As another Father's Day arrives, Baton Rougean Larry Koenig has occasion to think of the life he's shared with his five children and three grandchildren. But beyond his own family, Koenig has influenced thousands of other youngsters through a long-running motivational program, a popular book on parenting, a series of parenting seminars around the country, and his new initiative to improve the reading skills of America's children.
These days, when the phone rings at the office Koenig keeps behind his White Oak Landing home, it's likely to be a national magazine or out-of-town newspaper looking for a quote.

Since 2002, when HarperCollins published Koenig's "Smart Discipline: Fast, Lasting Solutions for Your Peace of Mind and Your Child's Self-Esteem," he's been sought out as a parenting commentator by the national media.

"I get used now as a kind of expert for major parenting publications such as Parents magazine, and there are newspapers that use me," said Koenig. "It was the Omaha Chronicle, I think, that called last week."

One challenge for reporters seeking Koenig is finding him at home. As the creator of what's been hailed as "the most popular parenting seminar in the United States," Koenig travels frequently to present "Smart Discipline" programs across the country.

"I normally speak in 80 cities a year," Koenig said earlier this month. "I have other 'Smart Discipline' presenters who do 300 a year. Before 9-11, we were doing 1,000 presentations a year. My whole life is dedicated to helping children be happy and successful."

In addition to his lectures on successful discipline for kids at home and school, Koenig and an associate, Mark Viator, have developed a pilot program to improve the way that reading is taught to school children. The project will be tested in Milwaukee and in Baton Rouge's Head Start program, and if it's successful, Koenig plans to take the concept nationwide.

"I can't imagine anything I'd rather do with my life," Koenig said of his literacy initiative. He described his reading advocacy as a natural extension of his work with discipline issues at school and home.

"If you've got a child sitting there in the eighth grade, and he can't read, what's the discipline going to be like?" he asked. "It's going to be terrible. Seventy-four percent of the kids in the third grade who can't read are never going to learn how to read. This is the biggest thing I've ever done in my life."

Koenig traces his sense of mission to his childhood in Boscobel, Wis., a small community 80 miles west of Madison.

Larry John Koenig was born on April 29, 1950. His father, Harold Koenig, was an educator-turned-insurance salesman. His mother, Margaret, helped run her husband's insurance office and kept house. Harold Koenig died in 2000 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.

Margaret Koenig continues to live in Boscobel.

Larry Koenig's childhood household also included two older brothers. Tom, now 58, retired to Florida after developing much of the software used to address the Y2K bug. Stan, 62, is a State Farm agent in Madison.

"From my dad, I got a love of people," Koenig recalled. "From both of my parents, I inherited my love of life.

"My father sold insurance. That's what he loved to do," said Koenig. "He sold insurance to farmers, and they were his friends. He knew their families and everything about them. I think he had over 3,000 families insured with him when he retired."

Koenig said he's looked to his mother as a role model in his writing. "My mother is a wonderful writer," he said. "She only has a high school education, but she has a wonderful ability to write. The content isn't extraordinary, but the writing is extraordinary."

In a common small-town tradition of the time, Koenig would walk home from elementary school for lunch with his mother, then return to campus for the afternoon. "She was always there when I came home from school," he recalled. "It was a powerful way to grow up -- a lot of security."

That sense of safety was dramatically challenged when Koenig was 11, and a congenital defect began blocking blood flow to his intestines. After several misdiagnoses, he was slated for surgery. Beyond his hospital bed, Koenig could hear a doctor give him only a 50-50 chance of surviving the operation.

"During the surgery, Jesus came to me and said, 'I've saved you. Come follow me,'" he recalled. "That's a pretty powerful thing. Because of my religious experience, I thought I wanted to be a minister."

After starting the University of Wisconsin as a history major, Koenig transferred to Iowa Wesley College, where he graduated with a degree in religion.

"My senior year, I took a job as a youth minister at a church in Iowa," Koenig said. "It's difficult being in ministry because every member of the church thinks they're your boss."

Deciding that life as a minister wasn't for him, Koenig moved to Florida, eventually earning a master's and Ph.D. in counseling and psychology from the University of Sarasota. Family connections brought him to Baton Rouge in 1982, where he worked as a counselor with a local employee assistance program.

In 1986, he developed "Up with Youth," a motivational program aimed at youngsters that he took on the road for 12 years. "I wanted to help kids to develop a vision for the future and to help them know that they were in charge of their future," said Koenig. "We wanted kids to know that life just didn't happen to you -- that there were things you could do to change your life."

As he spent more and more time traveling, Koenig noticed a pattern. "My children were fairly well-behaved when I was home," he recalled. "But when I was on the road, my wife was really pulling her hair out."

"We, too, wanted peace in our house," Koenig tells readers in his introduction to "Smart Discipline."

"The bickering, the screaming, arguing, bad attitudes and intolerable behavior had reached a crescendo … That is not to say that our children were bad. They were not. But they had developed some pretty maladaptive ways of getting what they wanted … the Smart Discipline System was the result."

"Koenig directs readers to link children's most irritating behaviors to their favorite activities, so that being able to do the latter depends upon improving the former," Publishers Weekly said in a review of Koenig's "Smart Discipline" guide for parents.

"This relationship should be illustrated in a prominently posted daily or weekly chart that tracks the child's behavior. There's nothing new about this approach; it's the rigidly systemized charts themselves, which should be used consistently and automatically, that will, according to the author, eliminate the need for threats and lecturing."

"Smart Discipline" is the most widely known of Koenig's books, which also include "Smart Discipline for the Classroom" and "Happily Married for a Lifetime." In 1995, Koenig presented two, 90-minute "Smart Discipline for the Classroom" workshops on the PBS educational satellite system.

"That was a pretty proud moment," Koenig said of the PBS workshops. "It went everywhere."

Koenig's national profile grew even more after HarperCollins published "Smart Discipline."

"That was the only hardback parenting book that they did in 2002," said Koenig. "HarperCollins is one of the five top publishers in the world.

"A lot of it is a tremendous amount of persistence," Koenig said in explaining his success in publishing. "Talent alone isn't it. I know a lot of writers who are much more talented than I am, but they don't get published at that level.

"I write about things that affect me personally," Koenig added. His books on parenting were drawn from experiences with his own children and the ones he met in his work. His book on marriage was inspired by his relationship with his wife, Nydia. Their blended family includes five children, now all grown, and three grandchildren.

"I always thought that if I had a happy marriage like my parents had, then I'd be the luckiest guy in the world, and I am," he said.

As Koenig works to build a readership for his books, he's aware that generations of students are growing up illiterate.

"Across the country, 23 percent of our kids are not learning how to read," said Koenig. "Fifty-five percent of the kids in the Chicago public school system can't read. In literacy in the world, the United States ranks 17th. People assume that the problem is that teachers are not teaching phonics, but that isn't the issue."

The challenge, said Koenig, is that children with no exposure to books are being taught in the same classroom, and with the same methods, as children from homes where they've been read to since birth. It's as ineffective, in Koenig's view, as trying to teach advanced calculus to children who can't add or subtract.

"About 75 percent of the kids in the first grade have had at least 1,000 hours of reading practice at home," said Koenig. "The other kids have zero."

To teach reading to children who lack exposure to books, Koenig's program reinforces three messages to students: You have a great memory. It's easy for you to learn. It's easy for you to read out loud.

"I can't imagine anything I'd rather do with my life," Koenig said of his involvement with the reading initiative.

"Since my operation, I've felt like I'm meant to do something that's very important in my life, and I didn't know what it was. This is it."