LENA Start is an evidence-based community program designed to engage families and help them increase responsive, serve-and-return interaction with their children during the first few years of life. Interactive talk — specifically back-and-forth conversation — works wonders for young brains (even before they know how to "talk"!).

During LENA Start, families use LENA’s one-of-a-kind “talk pedometer” technology to measure their child’s language environment. Over the course of 10 weekly sessions that can be delivered virtually or in person, families explore this data in the form of personalized, actionable feedback reports, discussing research-based strategies with their peers to increase the quantity of talk at home.

LENA Start helps communities reach parents and caregivers of young children through five integrated elements:

School districts, libraries, healthcare systems, and community- based nonprofits across the country have reached more than 4,500 children and families through LENA Start. Check out our interactive map of program partners and explore some of their unique impact stories:

University-Community Partnerships

LENA Start is a catalyst for positive change in individual families and entire communities alike.
Read more on the Effectiveness page.

11-point percentile
gain in conversational
turns between
children and their
caregivers.

Children are 3x more likely
to achieve “Late Emergent
Reader” on the Star Early
Literacy® assessment than
a matched control group.

On average, parents
increase the time they
spend reading with
their children every
day by 63%.

Inside Early Talk, the latest report from LENA's research team, takes a close look at how the highest-talk caregivers accomplish so many conversational turns with their children. It turns out they aren't talking nonstop! That's good news for the rest of us, because it means creating higher-quality language environments is an attainable goal.