You should spank your children every day. You may not know what they’ve done... but they do...
Actually, the (biblically based) advice I’ve gotten was to spank them for any “first time” offense, because it is likely NOT the “first time”, just the first time you caught them.
“You better duck, you know you need it” was a joke around our house. I’d never hit them but I’d bring my hand up real quick next to them and they would wince, hence the phrase.
I was spanked a lot, often on my bare behind, sometimes with an implement. My dad stopped just short of what would be called a beating today. That stopped about age ten, when I refused to cry one spanking, no matter how hard he hit.
At about age eleven or twelve my dad back-handed me into a wall, bloodying my nose and breaking my tailbone when I fell to the floor.
When I was 16 I got a full-blown beating with a frying pan which left my behind green and purple for a couple of months.
Keep in mind I was a girl and small for my age, we were an upper-middle class intact family, and no alcohol was involved. None of this was considered unusual for the times, except maybe the last beating. And it was the last, believe me.
I vowed never to spank my kids, so I ended up spanking them just the right amount of times. Usually a single, open-handed whack on a toddler’s diapered rear, just enough to make a nice sharp sound.