Most child psychiatric evaluations look for “what is wrong” with a child. Our approach is different.
We ask what is happening in this child’s world — in their family, their school, their nervous system, and how we got here. That shift changes everything. It changes who is in the room, what the assessment produces, and what treatment can actually accomplish.
The family is the unit of care, not the child in isolation. That means we spend weeks building a complete picture across your child’s development, their relationships, and their biology.
The assessment process begins with a conversation, not a form.
Our Patient Navigator will talk with you about your child, your family’s needs, and whether the Krasner Institute is the right fit. From there, you’ll complete a detailed developmental history before your first appointment, so that your time with Dr. Krasner is spent in real clinical conversation.
The Parent Interview
The parent interview comes before your child is seen. Both parents or caregivers are asked to attend. This session is the foundation of the entire assessment — it’s where the developmental picture takes shape and the questions for your child’s session are identified.
Your Child’s Session
Your child’s session is adapted entirely to their age. For younger children, the primary medium is play: sand tray, art materials, structured games. Play is not a warm-up — it is the clinical data. For older children, it incorporates more direct conversation. Throughout, Dr. Krasner is observing how your child thinks, feels, relates, and regulates.
School and Medical Documentation
School and medical documentation is gathered as a standard part of every assessment. What a teacher observes is often different from what a parent observes, and those differences are frequently the most important findings of the entire process.
The Draft Review
Before the report is finalized, you meet with Dr. Krasner to read the draft together. You respond, correct, and add. The final document reflects what you know about your child alongside what the clinical team observed.
By the end of the assessment, your family will have:
A coherent account of how your child arrived at this moment. A diagnostic formulation that explains not just what is happening but why. A treatment plan built directly into the report. School-ready recommendations in language educators can act on. And a clear roadmap for next steps.
Most families have never received anything like it.
No two children are the same. Treatment is customized for every family.
The formulation that comes out of your child’s assessment is not a template — it is a specific account of this child, in this family, at this moment. Treatment follows directly from that. Every clinician involved in your child’s care works from the same picture, meets twice weekly to share what they’re observing, and adjusts the plan together as your child changes.
Where Treatment Begins
As the therapeutic relationship develops, individual therapy deepens, moving toward expressive, play-based work for younger children, and evidence-based approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy for older children who are ready for more structured, skills-focused work.
Working With Your Family
Parenting a child who is struggling is difficult. The patterns that form around a child in distress — the accommodations, the tension, the exhaustion — are a completely normal response to high levels of stress. They are not a sign that something is wrong with your family, but they can become part of what keeps a child stuck. That’s where we can help.
We offer structured, evidence-based parent coaching that gives families a real clinical framework for understanding what’s happening and why. For some families, that support extends into the home itself, with a trained behavioral specialist working directly in the environments where things are hardest, to help put the treatment plan into practice where it matters most.
Medication, When It’s Right
Every family that comes to the Krasner Institute is moving toward greater independence.
The ability to manage without the level of support they needed when they arrived — that is the goal of treatment, and every phase of the plan is oriented toward it.
Knowing If It’s Working
Every few weeks, you and your child’s teacher complete brief standardized questionnaires. The results are tracked over time and reviewed by the full clinical team. Every 8 to 12 weeks, you sit down with Dr. Krasner for a Collaborative Planning Meeting — a structured conversation with real data on the table. You see the same numbers the team sees. You give your perspective. Together, you decide what comes next.
If the treatment is working, the data shows it. If it isn’t, the plan changes before months go by without progress.
Where the Process Leads
Most families move through active treatment over the course of 3 to 12 months. As primary targets are met, the intensity of services is deliberately reduced, shifting focus from resolving the presenting difficulties to building your family’s capacity to recognize early signs and respond without needing the full team.
Graduation
When a child completes care at the Krasner Institute, we call it graduation, not discharge. Dr. Krasner writes a graduation summary: a narrative of the arc of the work, what your family came in with, what changed, and what your child’s strengths are going forward.
Staying Connected
Graduating from active treatment doesn’t mean leaving the practice. Alumni families receive an annual check-in before the school year begins, a review of any active school accommodations, and proactive outreach at the developmental transitions — middle school, high school — when earlier vulnerabilities are most likely to resurface.
If you need to re-engage, you have priority access. We already know your child. We are not starting over.