I'm sure your girls are positively delightful. No one is questioning your affection or concern for them. (BTW we picked up Shaw's book this a.m. on the strength of this thread)
That being said, idle statements like the one above would lead one to conclude you're very comfortable casting yourself in the role of Goldilocks; and that's just not where a parent with a tantrum throwing child belongs.
I also have to disagree with you on the "manual." And men do read it, but it's not in one volume, and it's certainly not a baby book. It is the literature of Western Civilization. Literature that produced men we can scarcely identify with anymore. We have been so preoccupied proving we superceded our forbears, we don't even understand what it is that made them great. That's one reason I love C.S. Lewis.... Screwtape Letters, God in the Dock anthology (which contains the previously mentioned First Things), The Great Divorce, etc. are all studies in how we convince ourselves to do that which we want, rather than that which we should. Furthermore, as Tammy Bruce recently said in "the death of right and wrong," Lewis does not try to convince: he demonstrates.
I will. Do you think I can get a copy from the local library?
If you can't, the local librarian should be jailed for malfeasance and dereliction of duty ;o) (God in the Dock is my favorite, though my wife like the simplicity of Screwtape Letters. Englishmen take a bit of effort for Americans.)
I have to go on my experience from my own childhood where I was told constantly, to stop being angry or there is no need to be afraid. I help my girls define the emotion (I know you are angry but you are not allowed to act this way or I know you are scared of the dark but if you close your eyes you see nothing and there is nothing in the dark that is not in the light) then teach them what is an appropriate reaction to that emotion.
No doubt you do, but if I take your verbage at face value, I'd have to conclude you were constantly carping about those two things. And just the two points you mention in the above sentence, frustration and fear, speak more toward your resentment over their not being properly appreciated by your parents, rather than any developmental burden suffered by you. You may not have liked it, but that doesn't make it wrong.
If the kid comes down on Christmas morning and starts crying because the new bike is the wrong color...that emotion is a punishable offense! "Why" will be explained in excruciating detail for an extended period of time, but it will be punished swiftly and severely.
Note, I am not saying the grief and upset experienced by the child is anything but genuine. I'm not questioning the identitiy of the emotion, I'm questioning it's pedigree. If it's not legitimate, it's not relevant.
And before we get on the "who are you to say" merry-go-round, know that I can just as easily, and with no hesitation, ask "who are you to say I can't?"
I contend a proper understanding of Western Civilization will make the moment by moment decisions of child-rearing as reflexive as typing to a typist, and evoke the bitterest of criticism from the "hunt and peck" crowd.