I have three children with my ex, with whom I broke up about 6 years ago. He's been very on and off with parenting over that time, seeing them on average one day per week with very few overnight visits and sometimes two or three weeks without seeing them at all.
He's a difficult character and our relationship ended because he was emotionally abusive and I realised I didn't want my children seeing that and thinking it was ok or normal. However I wanted him to still be in their lives.
Much more recently I pushed harder for him to spend more time with the children. My eldest has ASD, I work and life in general has been really stressful, so I wanted him to help. Around this time he also got into a new relationship and I believe his new girlfriend had really influenced him to want to spend more time with the children.
However I'm wondering whether it's a mistake and there is anything I can or should do. Putting my issues with him aside, the children seem really unhappy. Involving him more was supposed to help but I don't think it has. He has them once a week, sometimes overnight and is very forceful and angry about his 'right' to this, even though it was what I'd wanted. He takes them to his, where most of the time they do nothing and the kids are bored out of their minds. By nothing I mean literally that. They have very limited toys and they just sit in their rooms feeling sorry for themselves. It's not like they're watching TV or colouring or anything else - there is none of that. He refuses to buy toys. It's a one toy at Christmas rule and even then, it's often not actually a toy at all.
I know this might not seem that bad and maybe he's just strict but even his girlfriend (a parent herself) tries to encourage him to take the kids out or will do activities with them if she's around. He mostly won't budge on this though.
As a result the kids hate going there and complain to me endlessly about it. They're reluctant to complain to him because they will either get a smack around the head or he threatens not to bring them back to me. He then always tells me they love it there, they're happy and they're just manipulating me, if I try to bring it up with him.
I'm so torn, to be honest slightly scared about going up against him because he can be so volatile and not even sure if there is anything I can do. It's only once a week but the kids complain daily about going to school and I can't even say to them, well at least it's nearly the weekend because they tell me they'd rather be at school than their dad's.
Any advice is much appreciated, even if it's just telling me that I'm blowing it out of proportion because right now I'm not sure whether I'm seeing this clearly or being too soft on my kids.