Here is roughly what we did, Aiden was about 16 mo too I think & we were modifying it slightly every few days
Firstly had a good bedtime routine, we had bath, dressing stories 3 chosen by Aiden from a set of 6 "bed time books" & then the last was a short one "Teddy bear teddy bear go up stairs, tb tb say your prayers, tb tb turn out the light, tb tb say good night". We do this every night.
While the last story of Aiden's is being read he says good night to the 6 animals in his Noah's ark toy (cloth one)... he takes Noah (known to him as "santa" due to the white beard) to bed with him.
When we do the teddy bear book he kisses his big puppy toy & teddy good night... teddy then gets put in bed & then Aiden into bed.
When we started this, when Aiden got into bed we used to say sh teddy is trying to get to sleep, you have to help him by being nice & quiet.
I took a bit of the pressure off Aiden by focussing some stuff on the teddy... like if Aiden got more upset at some stage, I used to say "did Teddy wake you up, or sh you don't want to wake teddy up"
as you mentioned you only put Khyan into his cot drowsy... well the first thing you want to do is focus on letting him be less drowsy & more awake, so more settling takes place in the cot. Once you get to the point where you put him in awake, you then try to remove the hands on settling you do there, so eventually you reach the point, he doesn't need you.
In the beginning expect it to take longer than what you do now, because what you want to do is, put steps in between the drowsy stage & the hand on his body stage, so you can remove the drowsy stage & then move towards removing the hand on body stage.
Now my first thing is this is just a rough plan of what we did, you won't be able to follow it to the letter as you need to take into account the variables of your lo, each day, his health & how tired/grumpy he is at bed/nap time.
I'm guessing you rock him in a rocking chair to get him drowsy... if it is anyother way let me know.
After he is drowsy, put him down in his cot & rather than just placing your hand, gently pat for a while telling him good night or nighty night or what ever suits, slowing it down as he drifts off... then after a few days, try to put him down less drowsy, so you will need more patting & quiet talk. The aim is to gradually wean him off needing to be drowsy to go in the cot.
Once he goes in the cot awake, you then have the patting & talking to get him off to sleep & because you have got him used to this step, he is less likely to stand up & balk at it.
Then you gradually wean him off the patting, I did it by going from doing it on his nappy area, to his ankle ( so he knew I was there) to then doing it on the cot mattress ( not touching him). Also along the way I used to slow it down every few days too so I was only patting the mattress once to a count of 5, then by the end it was 10.
I always kept saying the nighty night through this, about every count of 5. So once he no longer needed me to pat, I still sat beside & said nighty night every count of 5... then less so say count of 10 etc. Then the next step was to move closer to the door & then outside the door etc.
When I got outside I then started doing nighty- night, count 5, nn, count 10, count 15 ext...
Now sometimes I had to go back a few steps, say when he was overtired or sick, I might have to go back to sitting in his room for a few days & then continue the progress.
I will be honest sometimes I felt like I lost my whole evening, I was exhausted & there were many times I felt it was 1 step forward & 2 steps back, but it eventually paid off.
I think the key is to move at the progress that you & your lo feel comfortable with ie don't change things on days you know you or Khyan won't be able to cope wiht the change.
Also you may find some steps don't work, but something else works... the thing I know is you want to gradually reduce your involvement, so sometimes you may 'pull out' too soon, or stay at a step too long, but just be consistent & think of it in terms of say you learning to drive... some parts came easier & others you needed a lot more practice to get there & then suddenly it all fits together as second nature!
that is it in a nut shell, feel free to ask clarification of steps if you decide to follow something like that.
