Tantrums and bad habits debate

I was innocently looking through my birth club (online forum) posts and saw one with the title Tantrums and Bad Habits, as we're talking about 10 month old babies I was curious to see what the post was about. And did I have a surprise!! Apparently 10 month old babies have tantrums... And they also have terrible bad habits that need to be broken: these bad habits consist (according to the mother in question) of her baby wanting to eat some of her food (preferably from her own hand, terrible child!) after he has eaten his own dinner, and if he doesn't get what he wants he has a "tantrum" (I guess she means that he screams or/and cries), she also mentions the child stumbling (mine doesn't even stand upright yet so the stumbling itself seems amazing to me) and "whining" as a consequence (maybe he's hurt himself?), she doesn't pick him up, only if he has really hurt himself, so the question to the group is: do your children have tantrums at this age and how do we stop these bad habits (like wanting some toast of crying if they fall over...).

Now, I don't know about you but this made me rather cross, Mr Baby is the exact same age, is allowed to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants and he's the happiest eater of our bunch (the only one who will wolf down veggies or pretty much anything else you put in front of him :) while the conventionally weaned children pick at their food as if most of it was poisonous) as well as being very good at regulating himself food and sleep wise, much is to be said about baby led parenting. We love to have him sitting on our knees and grabbing whatever from our plate, I cannot imagine the parent who doesn't enjoy this closeness. But the tantrum bit left me rather surprised, Mr Baby will certainly shout if upset or frustrated (you try taking something away from him, the screams can be heard from the next county) and fair enough! He's a little person with likes and wishes that need to be respected as if he was an adult, and to tell you the truth I wouldn't like to have a passive and depressed child that never reacts to anything, who never complains or expresses himself. No it is not convenient to bring up independent thinkers and to show respect to our children, it is much easier (but is it really?) to train them like pets, put them on naughty steps and force them to conform. To think that a baby can develop bad habits is just ridiculous, in a subsequent post the mother I mention says that she did not breastfeed (fair enough, her choice, but it meant she missed out on a strong bonding experience) and did controlled crying on the poor child when he was just 4 months old. I can say that all these things create a wedge between us and our children. What a sad picture: a baby sitting on the floor crying because he wants to be part of his mother's world (in this case sharing her meal) and the mother thinking that this is naughty behaviour.