Ex is emotionally distant/sarcastic with our kids.

We share custody of our two girls (4 and 7) 60/40 and they often have a very difficult time leaving her, like full on melt downs the second we pull away from her house. And this is not at all a new situation (3 years now). Usually it's not so much an issue as the transitions have always been from daycares, but those are closed now with the whole coronavirus thing. It would happen occasionally on my time before, but mostly from the youngest and almost always when she's clearly overtired, gets in trouble, or doesn't get her way with something.Their mom is someone who constantly uses sarcasm, even with my kids who clearly DO NOT understand it, and just attributes it to her having a "sassy" personality. She's also the type to be extremely focused on outside appearances or making things look good for Facebook and always HAS to have a perfect looking home. She absolutely lives in constant fear of outside judgment, and it's really quite sad. For example, can't even bring herself to go to an exercise class for fear of how she'll look despite the fact she's on the more attractive than average scale. Unfortunately she also has a lot of chronic pain and sleep issues too, which makes her fairly short tempered, and she'll use a fairly biting and annoyed voice with them a lot of the time.To me it seems that this causing stress in my kids and I worry that they don't get enough quality time and emotionally engaged attention from her, so they are experiencing a lot of stress when they are leaving her or are not with her. To me this really screams of having an insecure attachment.Part of me worries that it's a function of shared parenting, but at the same time I know quite a lot of single parents with shared parenting situations (both mothers and fathers) and this does not seem to be the norm. I also know that there is a growing body of research that shows it is the most ideal situation for long term development for children of separated parents (and some even say it's especially true for girls).Now, there's absolutely no productive way for me to bring this up with her directly. She takes any and all criticism as a direct personal attack (even things like performance reviews at work), so there's zero chance of me getting through to her.Talking to my kids directly about it seems very tricky too as I don't want to end up being accused of bad mouthing their mother to them. I did ask them if they feel like they are getting enough quality time or attention from her when they're with her, to which they said she barely plays with them and is always cleaning or doing other stuff (probably glued to her phone, it rarely leaves her hand).Is there anything I can do to help my kids with this? Or are there any good ways to help them voice their needs to their Mom more, without stepping into any problematic territory? via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/34bvOsA