Welcome to LENA Start™!

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Watch your child come alive with language!

Early talk supports healthy brain development and function, social-emotional skills, early literacy skills, and so much more!

One of the most important things you can do to support your child's language development is talk with your child!

How does LENA Start help my child's language development?

LENA Start offers benefits for everyone: your child, your family, and YOU!

By participating in LENA Start, you will:

Increase your knowledge how your child's language and brain are developing.
Learn ways to increase conversations with your child.
Explore and build on your strengths.
Connect with other parents and caregivers in your community.

As your child participates in LENA Start, you may notice them:

Saying more words and saying new words.
Increasing in confidence.
Better expressing their feelings and needs, which can lead to fewer challenging behaviors and stronger relationships.

The knowledge and skills we gained to help our son's language development were invaluable. The weekly reports also provided great feedback on our progress. We highly recommend this program to anyone who wants to help their child succeed!

LENA Start parent

Marathon County, WI

If every child that started early intervention speech therapy were able to start with this program, I truly believe therapy would be shorter. It’s so helpful when parents are able to be educated through a program.

Stephanie Defeo

LENA Start parent and SLP

How does LENA Start work?

LENA Start is a community program for families to boost children's language development.

Each LENA Day...
Your child wears a LENA device to measure the back-and-forth interactions between adults and your child.

The data from the LENA Day produces a parent report that shows you how many words your child hears throughout the day and how many conversational turns adult caregivers had with that child.

During each weekly group session, you will...

Learn new techniques to increase interaction with your child.
Share experiences, successes, and challenges.
Review LENA Day data and receive feedback from your coordinator.
Set a target goal!

Your child’s safety and privacy are important to you — and to us.

The LENA device is small, 100% safe, and 100% private.

Meets safety standards for electronics and toys.
Uses the same type of low-power processors as hearing aids.
Does not transmit a signal like cell phones.

The LENA device does not understand or transcribe any words in any language. It cannot play back audio.

Learn more:

Five Things to Know About LENA and Privacy
LENA technology
LENA's Privacy Policy

Over 13,200 families have participated in LENA Start.

Here is what some of them have shared:

I just think it’s a really great program. It was nice to have that feeling that you’re in the same boat, and everyone else is figuring out how to navigate talking to their baby, too. It was really eye-opening.

Ashley Pfalz

Colorado Springs, CO

As first time parents, LENA has really helped us learn how to interact with our daughter through conversation and talking... We would highly recommend LENA to all parents.

LENA Start parent

Marathon County, WI

When I did LENA Start, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh! I wish I would’ve known these little things with my older children.’ Because it really does make a world of a difference.

Lily Garcia

Phoenix, AZ