Well after my long rant this morning it turned out DH was winding me up 
So I spent a whole afternoon feeling nauseous, anxious, pissed off for no reason at all :( 
The manipulative thing is something I started to notice, the blog is obviously coming from an American perspective, US parenting is traditionally much more centred around authoritarianism (and I can never remember which is the "nice" one but I mean the super strict one) with a lot of emphasis on compliance/obedience, defiance/disobedience and punishment being a big thing. Some stuff I've picked up from talking to normal parents (being abroad) - one mum from California (so a pretty liberal state!) made a joke about "taking the fear out of the wooden spoon!" and I didn't get it for ages until I realised that she meant that a 5/6 year old of this generation would have an innate knowledge that a wooden spoon is a discipline instrument. I was quite shocked by that. Likewise, a friend told me that lifeguards at the pool she went to as a child would haul a misbehaving child out of the water and make them sit on a bench for 5 minutes. I couldn't imagine that happening in Britain.
Also, (and this is spreading into online stuff which can be more extreme) notice how they talk about "a spanking" meaning more of a prolonged thing whereas in Britain it'd have been "a smack" or "a slap". Over 90% of US parents have smacked according to a recent survey whereas it's much lower here - I don't know exact figures, think it's over 50% still but nowhere near as high as the US. Historically I think British parenting has been more "benign neglect" with perhaps a swipe at the legs or a bit of a telling off if you'd been really stupid, or getting sent to your room for backchat, but not things like punishing for bad grades, even things like time out and grounding are fairly new imports. I remember seeing "time out" referred to on The Rugrats and finding it an odd thing, normal punishments seemed to be getting sent to room/sit on stairs, sent to bed early, having a toy taken off you, and definitely not that structured or with a special formula about X minutes per age etc.
Sooooo... to appease that she does still talk about defiance a lot and although she's talking about the very very important other things like emotional acceptance, looking at the root of the problem, setting limits without threats/punishment, better communication, etc, all of that good, useful stuff, she's still wanting to appeal to a group of parents who judge behaviour on how compliant their child is. So I find that she's often using language which supports this point of view and keeps promising vaguely more co-operation and compliance as you improve connection, communication and empathy with your child, which is true! It does help. But for me she's missing out on the very first and most vital point which is that obedience is totally irrelevant and unnecessary because when you parent like this, you're looking to instil values, not obedience.
www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2014/09/obedience-empathy-and-the-laundry-hamper.html
This is written by an ex Christian fundamentalist who now follows a more empathetic, gentle parenting style and explains the difference extremely well. This is part of what I was getting upset at DH about earlier too.
Plus I'm not sure I'm on board with the scheduled meltdown thing. It's a bit, I don't know, THAT feels manipulative. It feels like she's built up this idea "Oh I can handle my child's emotions and it is so important", it feels false to me to artificially provoke a situation which I know will upset my child just so he can get his hurt feelings out. I mean yes she says you should "schedule" the meltdown by imposing a limit, which you'd probably be doing anyway. Perhaps it's the way it's worded!