His contact is not court ordered, although I've considered going down that route merely to stop him dicking them about. He has a habit of going awol for weeks at a time and then coming back and demanding to see them on days we have plans or letting them down at the last minute.
My mum can cope with her, in fact she is the only adult who knows dd2, who dd2 knows well, who will take her out on without another adult with her. My sisters, my gran, my aunt always have another adult with them when taking dd2 out. They'll look after her alone in the house, but will not attempt days out. Ex himself, when we were together would often cut days out short because of dd2's behaviour.
The running off episode was a particularly bad set of circumstances that was always going to have dd2 blow up. It had snowed, the snow was laying, dd2 was over excited, it was also late so she was over tired. Whilst my mum sometimes struggles with her, that is the only real time she has lost control of her completely and considering she has her 2-3 times a week, that's not bad, imo.
I do not make her hold hands down the street or to cross most roads, but some roads she needs to hold hand, standing still, waiting for a break in the traffic and paying attention is not one of dd2's strong points, you can be halfway across before dd2 looks up from the interesting way the sun shines on her shoes and realises you've gone or she could all of a sudden take off down the street because she saw a leaf to chase.
It's not a simple case of a 13yo and a 7yo. It's that it is dd2, with all of her 'quirks', that particular cinema, in that location, that far away from any responsible adult they know. There are plenty of places I would happily allow ex's niece to take her, that cinema is not one of them.
Dd2 can and does run away and hide, lock herself in bathrooms (these things she's does if something has annoyed her) she has no fear of anything so running away does nor consist of hiding around the corner, she'll try to walk home alone. If she spots a friend on the other side of a road, she'll think nothing of running further down the road out of your reach to try and cross to see her friend, she often misjudges traffic and either waits when she could have crossed easily or crosses when there is oncoming traffic that would have to slow or stop for her to finish getting across. There is no pattern to this, it's just randomly one or the other.
She can get violent if she goes past what I call "the point of no return" this is what happened with my mum the day she punched her. If I was there I'd moved to damage limitation rather than control, once past a certain point dd2 cannot be controlled all you can do is try to keep her safe until she calms down. I wouldn't have meted out any punishments until everyone had chilled out a bit.
It is not fair to expect a pair of young teens to cope with that behaviour. Fair enough, in all probability, nothing would go wrong, but how would these two girls feel if dd2 wandered off home? Even if she did turn up again unharmed I'm fairly sure the girls would be worried sick.
I never meant that I would stop her contact with him altogether, I meant I would stop her going this weekend, or rather tonight, since dd2 herself refused to go last night and to have her tomorrow night would actually be a massive help to me and my mum, so of course, ex is unavailable.
I will see a GP, I did not know that was an option, the school always made out that only they could refer her and they see her as 'borderline' SEN and not in need of specialist help, beyond close supervision, which they are able to give her. My neighbour did once tell me that dd2 reminds her very much of her son at that age, who has ADHD/ASD, but we've always managed with her, so I've never really pushed the matter.
She is very excitable, often runs around the house squealing at the top of lungs for no particular reason, seemingly without even knowing she is doing it, if you give her a warning she stops immediately and says she forgot she's supposed to use her indoor voice. She manages not to scream or run indoors for 10 whole minutes on good days then you have to remind her again 
School describe her as being "off with the fairies" and tell me she needs constant supervision to keep her mind on her work, but she does quite well when she is trying and can get very engrossed in topics that interest her, such as when they did something on pets. The off with fairies is some thing we see at home, she's not allowed the fire on on a school morning because she will sit and stare into it and forget to get ready. She never sleeps, she never has done. She'll flit from one task to the other without ever really finishing anything, when dd1 and I are baking dd2 needs reminding that she is baking or she'll wander off and start painting or playing on her Hudl then wander back etc. We've always just put it down to who she is. We've (we meaning my family, I work FT evenings and they care for her so they have a massive input in dd2's life) always known she was different but never felt the need to push for any diagnosis because we manage with her and she seems happy mostly.