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To your baby's brain, the most important time in life is before the third birthday. Conversations with babies are a critical factor in brain development. Learn more ways to talk, read, and play with your baby and receive feedback with the LENA "talk pedometer."

LENA is a program intended for parents and caregivers of children from birth to 32 months old that incorporates wearable technology as well as a comprehensive curriculum to encourage interactive talk at home. LENA founders Terry and Judi Paul were inspired to establish LENA by the research and writings of Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley. Drs. Hart and Risley identified early language exposure as one of the most important factors affecting brain processing speed, brain structure and function, as well as IQ.

What is LENA Start?

LENA Start consists of 10 weekly hour-long sessions for groups of 10-20 parents. Sessions include slide presentations, videos, practical techniques, and regular feedback from LENA Coordinators to help parents talk more with their children. Each week throughout the program, LENA Start families complete a daylong recording with their child. At that week's LENA class, the caregiver then receives feedback in the form of a report to help them continue to improve.

LENA measures four things:

• Adult word count
• Interactions between the child and adults (conversational turns)
• Minutes of electronics/TV sound
• Self-reported reading minutes

• Use of LENA technology during the program
• Clear, entertaining lessons featuring videos and hands-on activities
• Take-home parent materials
• Easy-to-use Talking Tips to build conversations with your child every day
• Sharing with other parents of young children
• Free children's books to take home

What is LENA Home?

LENA Home is designed to add an early language focus to existing home visiting initiatives, and offers clear, built-in progress monitoring for caregivers, home visitors, program administrators and other key stakeholders. Each coaching session takes about 20 minutes to complete and covers foundational topics like dialogic reading and songs and rhymes. Currently, LENA Home sessions are solely supported by partnering organizations and recruitment is done internally.

For many reasons, children experience significantly variable levels of interactive talk with adults. Research shows that the amount of conversation children experience during the first few years of life varies widely, creating an early talk gap. Over time, the early talk gap becomes the achievement gap. The earlier we address this reality, the better.

A baby's brain develops rapidly between the ages of birth to 32 months old, building more than one million neural connections per second! Early language exposure, in particular interactive talk, is one of the strongest predictors of brain development. Interactive talk — also known as “conversational turns” — occur when a child and caregiver respond back-and-forth to each other. Studies involving early childhood development increasingly point to conversational turns, rather than adult words alone, as the key brain-building ingredient.

The language a child experiences is related to:

• The child’s brain processing speed
• The child’s kindergarten readiness and success transitioning to kindergarten
• The child’s verbal abilities and subsequent vocabulary acquisition
• The child’s brain structure and function
• The child’s IQ, verbal comprehension and linguistic skills 10 years later

By teaching caregivers about the importance of interactive talk and equipping them with practical strategies to increase conversations every day, our mission is to close the opportunity gap for good.