Reading his grandson’s daily updates from preschool has gotten commentator and writer Robert Chipkin thinking. Maybe they’d be useful for some adults he’s been listening to lately.

I envy my two year old grandson, who leaves day care every afternoon knowing exactly where he stands, clutching a progress report in his tiny hands. Crafted in educationally correct day-care speak, the day’s “progress” ranges from the mostly sunny “James learned the proper use of the word please,” to the partly cloudy “James is still working on the proper use of the personal pronoun,” to the downright enigmatic, “James has discovered so many things to do with his hands.”

All of which sounds so civilized that I thought such progress reports would make a fine addition to the preschool squabbling and that has so far marked the nation’s presidential campaign. Imagine if the nightly news reports sounded like this:

• Donald continues to show high levels of self-esteem and particularly enjoys building the highest tower of blocks. His next project is a giant wall. In his free time, he continues to explore the fluid properties of objective truth He is currently vocalizing a new sound – which appears to mean yes to the children who want to hear yes, and no to those who don’t.
• Hillary is still working on making more friends. While others are on the playground, Hillary prefers to plan out the rest of her day surrounded by a small group of advisors, who she refers to by their email addresses. She’s demonstrated exemplary hygiene; she loves to wash her hands of almost everything. At show and tell she told us about her dream to one day both marry the president and be the president. The boys said that was impossible. But that’s what boys always say.
• Bernie continues to make new friends among the children by promising them ponies for their birthdays. He plays equally well with Hillary’s friends and Donald’s by simply asking what they want and saying they can have it if they wish hard enough. Bernie has made “huge” progress on his language skills and was the only child to repeat the day’s lesson: that coming in second is as good as winning.

Of course all the children are winners because winning isn’t about building towers, or washing hands or promising ponies. Winning is about playing well with others.

Robert Chipkin is a columnist for the Republican newspaper. He lives in Springfield.