Watching versus not watching

Today we visited the "orange playground" by Jackson square, because it is a good playground to visit when it s cloudy and might slightly. Not if lighting is a risk (because it's mostly metal but it does have a roofed section, and also you don't want to go here when it is sunny because you will be cooked.
Jonah has some trouble climbing the rigging inside a prison like cage. At first I helped him but then realized he could probably do a lot of it himself now. At one point he could not get down from a certain section, but I saw that he was close enough to the ground that, while I'm not saying he wouldn't be hurt at all, I'm just saying he wouldn't be injured. At worst I think he could hit his chin, lips or face by sliding down too quick. But that didn't happen. What happened was he kept almost getting down and pulling himself back up out of fear.
I realized that were I to try and make him do that as an exercise, he wouldn't. But fear was preventing him from just jumping down. At the same time, it was making him continue to strengthen the muscles needed to get down more smoothly. So I left him there doing that for quite a while.
"You have to help me," he said.
At first I only would help him by giving him advice. He could either climb all the way forward and just go down the slide. or shift his hands back and drop down. He could get hurt, but not injured doing that.
Eventually I went up there and helped him down.

Then after climbing down a little farther he reached a similar situation, only now he was so close to the ground that not only would he not get injured, there was really no way to get hurt.
This time I would not help him and at one point I actually turned around and started walking home to see if it would help the situation. I thought he would take some time and eventually get down. But he actually just got down right away after I took one step. So was he struggling only because I was watching?

I guess parental support can inhibit you, but I didn't expect that to be true at age two.