It’s not contradictory at all. It says that we try to manage the behavior of the children too much.
"We give far too many choices and we give them far too early. It leads to frustration and fury and parents then trying to figure out why their children are so angry. We keep giving them more choices, saying, “well, what would you rather do?” and the children get even more furious because that’s what’s making them angry and they can’t explain themselves. As to alternatives to giving choices, it’s hard to take it out of context. Let’s just for the moment talk about one child and one parent. A mother at breakfast saying, “would you like to have rice crispies or corn flakes?” to a three-year-old should just put it down on the table, whatever she is serving. What the child needs — and it also happens to be more convenient for the parent — is to feel that the parent is authoritative, calm, self-reliant, and knows what she’s doing. She shouldn’t keep asking the child because at only two years old children don’t want to be expected to know what to do. They want the parent to know.
Giving choices not only looks like uncertainty on the part of the parent, it’s also, a very visible attempt to placate the child who then feels as though the mother doesn’t know how to treat him and is worried and feeling guilty and insecure. So this wheedling or pleading tone of voice makes children angry because they’re trying to get their parents to stand firm. They want them to stand firm because they rely on them, they want to feel that their parents know what they’re doing so that they, the children, can not only feel safe, but will have someone authoritative to follow around and to watch and imitate and assist."
And additionally from here: http://www.continuum-concept.org/reading/consequences.html
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To get away from consequences, rewards and other kinds of “behaviour management” it can be helpful to think in terms of living with your children, rather than controlling them. Unfortunately, many of us find it hard to have faith in our children. We’re afraid that if we don’t push, coax or coerce them into acceptable behaviour, they’ll never learn to be cooperative or responsible. This is probably a message passed on through our own childhood experiences and exacerbated by pressure from other adults. But Liedloff’s experience, and that of many parents, shows that exactly the opposite is true. When we stop trying to control and manage our children’s behaviour, their innate desire to follow our examples is able to come to the surface."
And from this very same page in regards to the “child centered view of (the west)”:
The crucial difference is that the Yequana are not child-centered. They may occasionally nuzzle their babies affectionately, play peek-a-boo, or sing to them, yet the great majority of the caretaker’s time is spent paying attention to something else…not the baby! Children taking care of babies also regard baby care as a non-activity and, although they carry them everywhere, rarely give them direct attention. Thus, Yequana babies find themselves in the midst of activities they will later join as they proceed through the stages of creeping, crawling, walking, and talking. The panoramic view of their future life’s experiences, behavior, pace, and language provides a rich basis for their developing participation.
Being played with, talked to, or admired all day deprives the babe of this in-arms spectator phase that would feel right to him. Unable to say what he needs, he will act out his discontentment. He is trying to get his caretaker’s attention, yet — and here is the cause of the understandable confusion — his purpose is to get the caretaker to change his unsatisfactory experience, to go about her own business with confidence and without seeming to ask his permission. Once the situation is corrected, the attention-getting behavior we mistake for a permanent impulse can subside. The same principle applies in the stages following the in-arms phase.
One devoted mother on the East Coast, when beginning sessions with me on the telephone, was near the end of her tether. She was at war with her beloved three-year-old son, who was often barging into her, sometimes hitting her, and shouting, “Shut up!” among other distressing expressions of anger and disrespect. She had tried reasoning with him, asking him what he wanted her to do, bribing him, and speaking sweetly as long as she could before losing her patience and shouting at him. Afterward, she would be consumed with guilt and try to “make it up to him” with apologies, explanations, hugs, or special treats to prove her love — whereupon her precious little boy would respond by issuing new ill-tempered demands.
Sometimes she would stop trying to please him and go tight-lipped about her own activities, despite his howls and protestations. If she finally managed to hold out long enough for him to give up trying to control her and calm down, he might gaze up at her out of his meltingly beautiful eyes and say, “I love you, Mommy!” and she, almost abject in her gratitude for this momentary reprieve from the leaden guilt in her bosom, would soon be eating out of his dimpled, jam-stained little hand again. He would become bossy, then angry and rude, and the whole heartbreaking scenario would be replayed, whereupon my client’s despair would deepen.
It appears that many parents of toddlers, in their anxiety to be neither negligent nor disrespectful, have gone overboard in what may seem to be the other direction. Like the thankless martyrs of the in-arms stage, they have become centered upon their children instead of being occupied by adult activities that the children can watch, follow, imitate, and assist in as is their natural tendency. In other words, because a toddler wants to learn what his people do, he expects to be able to center his attention on an adult who is centered on her own business. An adult who stops whatever she is doing and tries to ascertain what her child wants her to do is short-circuiting this expectation. Just as significantly, she appears to the tot not to know how to behave, to be lacking in confidence and, even more alarmingly, looking for guidance from him, a two or three year old who is relying on her to be calm, competent, and sure of herself.
A toddler’s fairly predictable reaction to parental uncertainty is to push his parents even further off-balance, testing for a place where they will stand firm and thus allay his anxiety about who is in charge. He may continue to draw pictures on the wall after his mother has pleaded with him to desist, in an apologetic voice that lets him know she does not believe he will obey. When she then takes away his markers, all the while showing fear of his wrath, he — as surely as he is a social creature — meets her expectations and flies into a screaming rage.
If misreading his anger, she tries even harder to ascertain what he wants, pleads, explains, and appears ever more desperate to placate him, the child will be impelled to make more outrageous, more unacceptable demands. This he must continue to do until at last she does take over leadership and he can feel that order is restored. He may still not have a calm, confident, reliable authority figure to learn from, as his mother is now moving from the point of losing her temper to the point at which guilt and doubts about her competence are again rearing their wobbly heads. Nevertheless, he will have the meager reassurance of seeing that when the chips were down, she did relieve him of command and of his panicky feeling that he should somehow know what she should do.
Put simply, when a child is impelled to try to control the behavior of an adult, it is not because the child wants to succeed, but because the child needs to be certain that the adult knows what he or she is doing. Furthermore, the child cannot resist such testing until the adult stands firm and the child can have that certainty. No child would dream of trying to take over the initiative from an adult unless that child receives a clear message that such action is expected — not wanted, but expected! Moreover, once the child feels he has attained control, he becomes confused and frightened and must go to any extreme to compel the adult to take the leadership back where it belongs.
When this is understood, the parents’ fear of imposing upon their child is allayed, and they see that there is no call for adversariality. By maintaining control, they are fulfilling their beloved child’s needs, rather than acting in opposition to them."