The assessment is done. You have a report - a long one, with sections you have read three times and sections you have not read at all. Somewhere in it is the sentence you were either waiting for or dreading, and possibly both.
Then the appointment ends, and you are holding a document, and nobody has told you what happens on Monday.
This page is about Monday.
For children: parent training comes first
Here is the part that surprises most families, and it is worth stating plainly: for children with ADHD, the first-line treatment is not therapy for the child. It is training for the parents.
This is not a comment on your parenting. It is about where the biggest difference can be made.
A child with ADHD spends an hour a week with a clinician and every other hour at home and at school. Parent training works on those hours — the structure of the day, how instructions are given, what happens in the gap between the instruction and the response, how consequences are set up, how homework is handled, how mornings are handled, how you and the school talk to each other.
Small changes to patterns that repeat forty times a week produce more change than an hour of one-to-one work does. That is not a shortcut; it is where the evidence points.
What it involves in practice: sessions with the parents - sometimes with the child present, sometimes not - working through the specific situations going wrong in your house rather than general principles. What happens at 6:30am? What happens when homework is asked for? What happens when you say no? We look at the sequence, work out where it breaks, and change that.
The work is grounded in positive parenting and attachment-based frameworks: the aim is not stricter discipline but clearer structure, and a relationship in which cooperation becomes possible rather than negotiated forty times a day.
Who runs it: Dr Nayla Daou and Sara Caroppo.
Most families notice the change first in the number of daily conflicts, before they notice anything else.
Therapy for children and teenagers with ADHD
Individual work matters too - usually alongside the environment work rather than instead of it, and often for something other than the ADHD itself.
By the time a child is assessed, many have absorbed years of a specific message: that they are lazy, careless, difficult, not trying. Ten-year-olds routinely describe themselves as stupid. Teenagers have often built an entire identity around being the one who forgets, who is late, who lets people down.
That is what individual therapy usually addresses - self-esteem worn down by years of "try harder", emotional regulation, and the story a child has started telling about themselves.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the approaches used with this age group. It works on the thoughts driving avoidance and frustration, and on building practical strategies the child can actually use. Sara Caroppo delivers this work with children and teenagers.
For younger children this work happens largely through play. Children do not generally have the vocabulary to describe what they feel, so play becomes the language instead - a fully equipped therapy room where a child can show, through toys and stories, what they cannot yet put into words. Through it they build confidence, learn to manage difficult feelings, and develop their own ways of solving problems rather than being handed adult solutions.
Sara Caroppo works with children and teenagers from ages 3 to 18. Dr Nayla Daou also works with this age group.
More about child psychology at ClearMinds →
Adult ADHD
A diagnosis in adulthood tends to arrive with relief first and something harder immediately after.
The relief is that there is a mechanism - that the career that kept stalling, the degree abandoned, the relationships damaged by lateness and forgetting were not simply evidence of not caring enough. The harder part is grief: for the decades spent believing the opposite, and for what might have been different with an earlier answer.
That grief is a real and underestimated part of late diagnosis, and it is often where the work actually starts.
Therapy for adults with ADHD typically focuses on:
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The accumulated shame of years of being told to try harder
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Relationships, at home and at work, where the pattern has caused damage
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Emotional regulation, which is a central part of adult ADHD and rarely the part people expect
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Deciding what a workable life looks like - not a life without ADHD, but one built with it accounted for
We work with this through psychodynamic psychotherapy, EMDR and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), depending on what is most useful for you.
Adult ADHD work is delivered by Dr Nayla Daou, Dr Dalea Alawar, Yassine Tayi and Dr Nardus Saayman
What we do not do - and where we will refer you
Two things come up constantly after a diagnosis, and it is better to tell you now than after you have booked an appointment.
ADHD coaching and executive-functioning training. We do not offer these. They can be genuinely useful, particularly for older teenagers and adults, and we refer to specialists who provide them.
Occupational therapy. Frequently recommended for sensory or motor difficulties alongside ADHD. Also not us, also referred out.
Medication is prescribed and managed by psychiatrists. We are psychologists - we do not prescribe, and we cannot tell you whether your child, or you, should be medicated. That decision sits with you and the prescribing doctor, and we coordinate with them when medication is part of someone's care.
What we can say is that the choice is rarely as stark as people expect. It is not medication or nothing. Many families begin with parent training and school adjustments and revisit the question later. Others find that medication makes everything else possible. It is a conversation with a psychiatrist, not a moral position.
A clinic that offers everything to everyone is usually a clinic that specializes in nothing.
The path from assessment to support
1. Assessment - testing, questionnaires, school or collateral information, and a written report. More about ADHD assessment →
2. Feedback session - the findings explained properly, in plain language, with time for questions.
3. A plan - which of parent training, individual therapy, school liaison and outside referrals actually fits your situation. Not all of them, and not the same combination for every family.
4. The work - with review points built in, so that what is not working can be changed rather than continued.
If your report came from somewhere else, in Dubai or abroad, that is fine. Bring it. We do not need to reassess in order to work with what it says.
Common questions
Does my child need medication? That is your and a psychiatrist's decision, not ours - we are psychologists and do not prescribe. What we can tell you is that many families start with parent training and school adjustments and revisit the medication question later, and that this is a legitimate and common path. Where medication is part of a child's care, we coordinate with the prescribing doctor.
Can adults be assessed and treated for ADHD? Yes. Adult assessment is a substantial part of what the clinic does, and adult therapy for ADHD is available whether the diagnosis is recent or years old. The focus tends to be on the accumulated effects - shame, relationships, emotional regulation - rather than on attention alone.
What if the school asks for accommodations? The assessment report is written so that schools can act on it, and it includes recommendations for exactly this purpose. Useful things to request: seating away from doors and windows, instructions given one step at a time, extra time in assessments where the report supports it, and a single named contact so you are not re-explaining to five teachers. Schools in Dubai vary considerably in how they respond; if you meet resistance, ask in writing what the school's process is for a documented attention or learning profile.
How long does parent training take? It varies by family and by what is happening at home. It is not open-ended - it is focused work on specific situations, and you and your psychologist will agree what you are working on and review it as you go. Most families see the first changes in daily conflict earlier than they expect.
We already have a diagnosis from elsewhere - can we start treatment with you? Yes. Bring the report and we will work from it. There is no need to repeat an assessment that has already been done properly.
Getting in touch
If you have a report and are not sure what happens next, send it to us and we will tell you honestly what would help - and what we do not provide.
WhatsApp or call +971 58 557 6220, email info@clearmindscenter.com, or use the contact form.
If you are at an earlier stage and wondering whether an assessment is the right step, our ADHD assessment page explains what the process involves.
Fees and payment → · Meet our team →