According to the UK's Education watchdog Ofsted, children in Britain are starting nursery school unable to speak and listen properly because of continuous noise and poor conversation at home.
Some schools report spending days or weeks educating parents and improving children's social skills.
The study said, "The schools attributed weak listening skills not only to poor conversation in the home but, very often, also to continuous background noise, such as constant television, the noise of siblings and raised voices, which are bound to dull sensitivity to the nuances of sounds."