Yeah, my kids only got 2 or 3 spankings each in their lives, and I made a point of never hitting them in anger Well, to be fair I lost my shit one time really early on and spanked my oldest because I was just DONE with a string of little things, and he really didn't deserve it, made me feel like I fucked up and so I made sure that never happened again. I probably threatened them with spankings 20+ times over the years, but they were really reserved for the big "you fucked up so bad you need to feel it" moments. I also feel like I lucked out because I could just be like "Time out, 5 minutes" and they would go stand in a corner facing the wall crying for 5 minutes, then apologize and be fine. I know some kids just say fuck that, make me!, but I never really had to deal with that.
All this talk of kids is making me happy to realize I only have about 4 years of Child Support left to pay on my oldest, and 6 on my youngest, not that there still won't be a billion costs when they are older, but at least I will be able to control where that money goes as opposed to "have a chunk of my income ex-wife, I trust you to spend it wisely - even though a massive problem in our marriage was your inability to not spend all the money!" haha. She's actually a lot better now that she actually has to manage her own finances, but still, I would be surprised if 20% of the support I give her each month could actually be traced to the kids.