I've not had first hand experience with the LENA, but I heard about it a few months ago on the Internet
(
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/TurningPoints/story?id=4701178).
When they were talking about how a study had shown that the ideal number of words a child should hear a day was 20,000, it sounded like a ton and I worried a little about whether I was talking to my son enough. The device they are advertising was $400 and
way out of my price range, and for a while I actually considered using a tape recorder to measure how much I was talking to him.
Later I did a little math to put my heart at rest to see if he was "getting enough" words. I found out that the average talking speed was about 120 - 200 words per minute. When you put it in that perspective, 20,000 doesn't sound nearly as hard to attain.
I then figured that, when talking to a small child you usually talk a bit slower than with adults, so I averaged that perhaps a good conversation with a small child would be somewhere around 100 words per minute. That's 6,000 words for every hour of talking that you do with your child. Divide 20,000 by 6,000 and you get 3.3333, so you would have to talk to your child for about 3 1/2 hours a day to get to 20,000 words.
This really put my heart to rest and gave me an attainable goal. Obviously you don't put 20,000 words in 3 1/2 hours of
straight talking with a little child, but it can give you an idea of how many words your child is hearing throughout the day based on how much time you've spent
with them, talking with them (talking about the day's events, explaining things that you see, describing what you're doing, reflecting on past events, etc.), singing with them, and reading with them. When you look back on the day, you can know that you spent 20 minutes reading with them here, 30 minutes talking in the kitchen about what you were doing while cooking lunch, 15 minutes narrating the nature walk you went on, another 30 minutes telling stories and reading poems after nap, 15 minutes talking with them in the car about last weekend, the sights outside, etc.
Even without a high-tech word-counting device, knowing how many minutes it takes to get to the ideal amount of conversation we should have in a day's time has given me more confidence and motivated me to talk with him more and more. For example, instead of popping in a DVD in the car, talk to him about where we're going or what we're going to do after lunch, or tell him a Bible story or sing songs. It's also motivated me to read to him more each day, and to pay attention to how much I'm involving him in what I'm doing (bringing him along side me and talking with him while we take out the trash, do the dishes, set the table, etc. instead of just leaving him to play by himself).
The device looks interesting, and it would be nice to have a device that actually tells you how much you talked to your child on a given day, and to make you more aware of the days that you neglect conversation. But for $400, most people can't afford it and it's really not necessary to give your child an optimal language environment. After all, mothers have managed to raise intelligent children for thousands of years without a word-counting machine, and if you put a little bit of thought into it, you can become aware of how much your child is hearing (and saying back) without a high-priced counter.
If you can afford it, it would be a fun thing to have, but if not, I hope this post helps the financially-poorer end of the spectrum to know that they can give their child an optimal language environment, and all it takes is a little forethought and involving your child in what you're doing.
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