Well, having worked in residential drug treatment, my first response was that when we sent the kids home for a holiday, we didn't expect them to spend it at friend's houses. We structured the heck out of the visit. MAYBE a friend or two could come over, but NO free rein in the neighborhood. The metaphor I used with parens is that it's like someone coming home from the hospital after an illness (which drug addiction is). You don't expect someone recovering from back surgery to play basketball in the park down the block, so you don't expect someone coming from drug treatment to be immediately strong enough to hang with friends. Just because he successfully was able to resist using doesn't necessarily mean it was a good position for him to be in.
On the other issue, I strongly support everyone who came down in favor of moderating the visits. It's always a balance between the difficult child's needs and the PCs and rest of the family. From a perspective of a clinical person in the tx center, we helped the parents set good boundaries. Sometimes it was more of a struggle to get them to visit AT ALL.
Anyway, that's my 2c. And it sounds like you made a great connection with the Director and that's half the battle right there.
