I really appreciate parents who actually take the time to let their kids help. It takes twice as long to let a kid do the project with supervision than it does to do it yourself and sometimes the busy day leads to people taking shortcuts by only having the kids do things that they won't need supervision for. I never really appreciated (at the time) that my parents did that for me.

Growing up I sometimes kind of hated learning on the job, there's always more fun things, but there is no replacement for the time I spent with my folks particularly on projects that I wanted to do and that one of my folks would patiently help without doing it for me. I loved the one-on-one attention too!

I think the experience made me less hesitant to try things that I otherwise would never try myself. Calling a handy man for every little thing or having your apartment deposit kept for not doing a good enough cleaning job is both frustrating and expensive.

It probably also made me better value others who do things with their hands and who are in service industries. They are often undervalued in US society.

Your kids may not always be grateful for the attention now but you're building strong kids who are good members of society.