YOUNG children are having a tearful start to their primary schooldays...because they just don't know how to play with other kids.

A life of television, video games and busy parents leaves them unable to mix, former Liberal Democrat MP Mike Carr has told his party's annual conference at Brighton.

Mr Carr, from Bacup, who is a special needs teacher, says urgent action is needed to prevent more and more youngsters becoming almost impossible to educate before they set foot in the classroom.

He has written to Education spokesman Don Foster setting out possible solutions. Mr Carr, who hopes to regain Ribble Valley from Tory Nigel Evans at the general election, said: "Four and five-years-olds are coming to primary school unable to play with other children and almost uneducable."

They often became aggressive towards teachers and fellow pupils, he said.

Mr Carr said while many were the children of single mothers, those affected came from right across the social spectrum.

"There seems to be a breakdown of parenting skills," he said. He blamed this on a variety of factors including the influence of TV and computer games, and the fact that the old structure of families living near relatives with "granny round the corner" had been replaced by a more mobile population where both parents often worked.

Mr Carr is calling for a multi-agency approach to the problem, helping schools to teach these children, identify families at risk, and help the parents to give the children the social skills they lack before coming into the classroom.

He wants compulsory lessons in parenting skills for 15 and 16-year-olds before they leave school in a long-term effort to eradicate the problem.

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