6 - # The Process Method

Toye Oyelese

Welcome back to Navigating Uncertainty. It's Dr. Toye Oyelese with you, and, well—like always, I'm grateful you're here, sharing time with me as we make sense of this parenting thing together. If you heard last episode, we spent some time on what I think is the foundation: that primary responsibility is your child's. You're the facilitator, not the substitute. Now, today, I want to take that idea and make it practical. Because theory's lovely, but, as every parent knows, it's the dailiness that gets you—what you do, or don't do, every single day.

Toye Oyelese

Which brings us to the Process Method. And—bear with me—I’m going to pull in a Greek philosopher. Six years ago, in a rare quiet moment, I stumbled on Heraclitus, this fellow from 2,500 years ago, who said: “You cannot step in the same river twice.” When I read that, honestly—I paused. It sounds simple, but he’s onto something deep: change is constant. The river’s always moving, the water’s never the same, and, more importantly, neither are you. That’s true for us as parents, and for our kids too—they’re always becoming, always shifting, never finished. It's almost funny—I spent decades bumbling through, thinking I could control outcomes and get a specific result, if I just did everything ‘right’. But the control? It was an illusion. I learned that lesson, sometimes reluctantly.

Toye Oyelese

See, you can’t freeze the future in place. And that doesn't mean we’re powerless. It just means the levers are different than we imagine. When I came to Canada—I’ll never forget this, working midnight shifts as a security guard, then going home to study for my medical boards, trying to become a doctor in a new country. There was just no way to guarantee I'd pass those exams. Too many things out of my hands: which questions would come up, whether my mind would go blank on test day, all of that. The only thing—really the only thing—I could influence? The process. How many hours I sat down to study. Which weak spots I focused on. If I actually did the sample questions, or just read the textbook and convinced myself I understood. All that. The process was mine. And over time, what I saw—sometimes painfully—is that a good process didn’t guarantee the outcome, but it nudged the probability in my favor. Not perfectly. But consistently, like a river wearing away stone.

Toye Oyelese

This is the core of the Process Method—what I've found works in parenting, and honestly, in life. You can’t make your kids hit every milestone, or protect them from every stumble. But you can stack the odds by focusing on their process, and your own. So, what do I mean by that? It comes down to the daily, sometimes boring, sometimes messy tasks that actually build capability—whether that's competence, responsibility, problem-solving, what have you. We talked a bit about helping versus enabling in previous episodes. And this is where it comes alive. Enabling, that's when we swoop in and do it for them—tie the shoes, finish the project, remind them thirty times. It feels like help, but it just polishes our own skills, not theirs. Helping, though? That's supporting them to do the aligned tasks themselves, even if it takes longer, even if it’s… let’s be honest… messier.

Toye Oyelese

I remember a stretch with my son—he was fourteen, struggling in math, staring down a C, and I could see the panic on his face. Every fiber in me wanted to fix it, hire a tutor, sit beside him every night and supervise homework. Maybe some of you know that feeling—that urge to jump in. And, you know, sure, that would've maybe bumped the grade, at least in the short run. But what capability would it build? He’d get the grade because Dad bailed him out, not because he learned how to wrestle with difficult stuff. So instead, I sat him down and we did something simple, but powerful. I asked, “What are you actually doing every day to learn this?” Turns out, it was late-night, half-awake homework, no questions in class, cramming before exams. None of those things, not really, built math competence—they were more about survival. So, I nudged him: what would aligned habits look like? Doing homework when his brain wasn't mush. Actually asking for help when something didn’t make sense. Studying a bit each day, instead of the ritual panic of the night before.

Toye Oyelese

I didn’t do the work for him. Just helped him figure out what real, process-aligned tasks could be. And then—I let go. Did he become a math genius? No. The grade crept from a C to a B minus, and I’ll take it. But more than the grade, he learned to look at his own process, and whether it actually led to the results he cared about. That resourcefulness, that habit of asking, “Are my actions really building the capability I need?”—that’s the heart of the Process Method. It’s not about immediate success. It’s about shifting probability in your child’s direction, one aligned task at a time.

Toye Oyelese

Let’s get practical for a moment—because if you’re like me, you want to know, okay, how do I use this without turning parenting into another self-improvement project? There’s really just three steps. First: name the capability you want your child to build. Not the outcome—a grade, a gold medal—but the inner skill: self-regulation, persistence, problem-solving. Second: audit what your child’s actually doing, right now. Not the ‘ideal’ version we imagine. The real, gritty, everyday tasks. Third: Are those tasks aligned with the capability you want them to build? If yes, step back, let them keep at it, even if it’s bumpy. If not, help them see what alignment looks like, then get out of the way. And then—it’s repeat, repeat, repeat. That’s it. Capability, tasks, alignment. Run it through the cycle, let it compound.

Toye Oyelese

Now, here’s the honest bit, and I won’t sugarcoat it—aligned tasks, at first, often look… untidy. When you do your child’s homework for them, it’s neat, on time, delivered with a smile. When they do it themselves, sometimes it’s late, sometimes it’s messy, and you might wince a little. But over the long run? Those imperfect, self-driven repetitions build actual capability, layer by layer. That’s the payoff, but, boy, you have to trust the process. And I know that trust can be hard. You know, I sometimes joke that after thirty-something years as a doctor, I still pause to triple-check how to say ‘pharyngotonsillitis’—and I laugh at myself, but really, it’s about showing up, doing the right process, letting the results follow in their own time. That’s the same muscle we’re asking of our kids, and of ourselves as parents. So maybe next time you’re tempted to take over, ask: what capability am I actually trying to build here? Are my actions aligned, or am I—maybe without meaning to—just piling up the process on my own plate?

Toye Oyelese

I’ll leave you with a couple of questions—because, as always, there’s no one-size-fits-all here. What capability are you hoping to build in your child right now? Are the daily tasks—both yours and theirs—actually aligned with that goal, or are they just serving the short-term outcome? Something to chew on until next time. And speaking of next time, we’ll get into the Rules Framework—how kids can learn to decode the systems around them and make smart, strategic choices, whether or not they like the rules. I’ve got some stories for you—about teachers, about coaches, about my sons figuring out systems that didn’t exactly go their way. For now, thank you for listening to Navigating Uncertainty. I’m Dr. Toye Oyelese. I hope this week brings you, well, a little more trust in your process.