Time-outs...never thought about it like this....WDYT?

sunnygirl05

I was just reading about time-outs on another board.  Someone responded that they have a time-out pad that they use.  She said something very interesting and it made me think about how I've been doing time-outs with Justin.  She said this....

The one thing we don't give timeouts for (and DH has a really hard time "getting" this.) is big emotions. If something doesn't go just right and they're crying, DH would rather send them to timeout because they won't stop crying. That's not okay in my book. Emotions are not cause for discipline. Actions are. 

Just yesterday Justin didn't get his way about something.  He wanted to go outside but we were getting ready to eat dinner and so I told him he couldn't.  He got extremely whiny and would not stop crying.  It was pretty dramatic.  I then told him that he would need to go to his room to calm down if he didn't stop.  We sometimes do time-outs in a time-out spot with him, but as he's gotten older they don't work as well.  And having some quiet time in his room as a distraction sometimes works better.  He did stop crying though, as he didn't want to go to his room.  However, the more I think about this I was probably wrong to do this.  Maybe taking him to the other room and saying that I understood he wanted to go outside but that we couldn't right now would have been a better thing to do.  Ok....now I feel like a crappy Mom (  I have to admit the whininess really got to me, especially because I was trying to get dinner ready.  I think I will handle this differently though in the future.

So...WDYT....time-outs for just actions or some emotions as well?