Thank you all for your insights. You're right, I have no idea about 'ds' or 'dd' as this is my first post. I have been busy all day with the kids, we had jujitsu (good for the discipline), then went and ate fancy pie whilst feeding the fancy ducks at the fancy duck pond haha
Apologies to those who think it's weird/creepy I call him 'the boy'. I also have 'the girl' it's a regional thing I think, no offence was intended.
I did email his dad (he can't have my number or he just sends abuse and rings me to tell me what a vile human being I am, it only been 5 years since we split, the boy was 3months old, the girl 2.5, it was not healthy for us to be there with him anymore).
I emailed along the lines of 'both the kids were very upset today about him being forced into the barbers. You know he wanted to grow it and it was recently trimmed. Please respect his wishes next time' to which the reply was 'how about f**k off' (bit longer than that but that was the very last line.
For context, I bring these kids up on my own, and have done with minimal input from him for the past five years. I send him updates (learning to ride a bike, new sports/instruments they have shown an interest in etc.), forwarded preschool and now primary school reports so he knows how they're getting on academically. I have never stopped him seeing the kids, apart from the one time he tried to break into my house in the middle of the night by kicking my front door in, then i got a solicitor. He refused supervised contact at the childrens centre and eventually settled on bringing a family member with him when he visited, which he did more regularly (twice a month) for 18months in which time there were no further violent outbursts and the children were happy to go with him again. So he started visiting with them again on his own last May 10-4 on a Saturday 1 or 2 times a month, and there have been no untoward moments, according to 7yo dd.
These kids are good kids, they are kind and thoughtful for the giants they are, they are respectful to adults and other kids alike (they're not perfect, if hungry or tired it's an 'approach with caution/snacks' situation), they are (mostly) good at listening and I afford them the respect they deserve of a woman who was told that getting pregnant was 'highly unlikely even with intervention' due to endometriosis, one surprise baby 8 years later later, followed by one planned. Neither of them want their hair cutting but will both have a trim when needed, hair isn't a big thing to me, so long as it's cleaned and brushed, so I thought it would be a good place to start regarding their autonomy and responsibility towards their own bodies.
My concern was that he's had something done to him that he didn't want. Now, sometimes, he doesn't want to put his shoes on to go to school, but it happens because it's school, he's going, that's that. But this wasn't one of those. We'd had a good talk about why he didn't want his hair cutting, we chose a plan of action, and were following through. His dad had already said to him that he needed to go to the barbers on a previous visit but ds had said no, and I thought that was the end of it. Unfortunately not. This time, their dad said to him 'you do as you're told, i'm the adult and I'm telling you you're having your hair cut, you don't get to choose' or something along those lines from what I could gather from both ds and dd reiterating the situation to me. My issue is that ds thoughts and feelings regarding his body were completely ignored, that he was told he had no choice, that he was very upset about it, his sister was upset about it, and that their dad was really bloody rude when I tried to address it with him (not a surprise but I was hoping things had improved, I was very wrong).
I wanted a broader view on it, which you have all kindly taken time out of your day to do, and for that I'd like to say thank you.