Do you have specific advice for the birthday/grandma scenarios? Or is that what you meant by sticking to the court orders? That if I'm not required to allow him to take the children for his birthday then he doesn't get them?

Point taken on your comments about parental alienation. I will admit to a cringe-worthy comment here and there over the past year - I am only human - but it is something that I am aware of and do my best to avoid. I strive to not say anything to them that I wouldn't say if he were standing there with us, which keeps me out of trouble. That being said, he never had a close relationship with them to begin with. Their attitude when he left was to just kind of shrug it off, and my daughter actually asked if she was allowed to divorce him, too. He came to pick them up for dinner a week later, and my daughter had to be forced to go. I took the kids out of town two weeks after he left and my son commented how much he was looking forward to a vacation where dad wasn't bossing everyone around. While I undoubtedly fanned the flames here and there along the way, their animosity towards him is deep-seated.

I'm not sure why you thought to caution about me asking what he'll do with the children on his time; I don't understand what I said that prompted that comment. The only thing I can think of is saying he plans to have the kids meet his girlfriend, so I'll explain. Since February we've been working with a family therapist to try to resolve visitation issues following a couple of disastrous visits which resulted in the kids being brought home early. The compromise we came up with is that he would only take the kids for a few hours at a time, gradually working up to longer visits. It seems to be working, with them starting out with outings of only 2hrs, up to the last weekend being 7pm Sat - 1pm Sunday. Dad's part of this compromise is that he is required to make arrangements directly with the children, which means he has to plan something they will agree to. In my state they are old enough to decide for themselves if they want to participate, and the legal advice I have received is that I am required to encourage them, but not expected to force them to go nor punish them if they don't cooperate. The family therapist, my daughter's individual therapist, and her psychologist are recommending the children be allowed to decide for themselves if they want a relationship with their father, so my part of the compromise is that I will require them to go, but only if they have approved the activity. The end result is that they don't have to meet her unless they want to, and given that in the past 8 months dad has cancelled visitation on 34 days specifically to vacation with her, I don't blame them for not wanting to.

Perhaps that arrangement is what you had in mind with your comment about professionals giving advice that would damage the children? From where I'm sitting, it was either that or go back to court to have his parenting time reduced, so I thought allowing him the time and space to repair his relationship with the children was preferable to yanking the rug out from under him.