My alomost 18yo son has been challenging in the past. He has refused to work, dropped out of school, spent all day playing video games, would eat everything in the house (including his 5yo brother's school lunches) and contribute nothing, and would steal from me all the time.

Last year around May, after a series of events, I threw him out of the house, and he went to live with his sister. She got him a job and in the last year, he seems to have turned things around. Yes, he's still lazy about chores, yes he still plays video games way too much, but she says he doesn't steal anymore, pays his bills and rent on time every time and he works hard when he's at work.

Just recently though, he and my daughter's boyfriend haven't been getting on, and my son's decided that he wants to move to Melbourne. He says he doesn't want to live with me, and says he wants to find a job and a room with other people, but this is where I start to get unstuck:

The practical parts of this are: he wants to move because he is lonely in the country town my daughter lives in. H'e sbeen there a year and while the remoteness has helped him stay focussed on work, he has had it hard making friends. Except in Melbourne, not only will he know no one but me and his older brother (who probably won't give him the time of day), but he'll be in a new city and not know his way around, or know anything, really. I worry that this won't be better for him as far as helping him with him already feeling like he's on the 'outer'.

Secondly, I don't want him coming to live with me, even short term, while he looks for work and a place to stay in Melbourne because I worry like crazy that he'll just go back to the way things were when he lived with me, with him being perfectly comfortable with me supporting him, and won't make any effort to move out or find a job. Whenever I visit my kids back in Perth, my daughter notes how he immediately starts acting like he's 10 years old, and starts treating me like I'll look after his every whim.

But I actually think it would be good for him to move here if he was doing it with the right motivations. If he really wants to make a change in his life, start fresh, support himself and even move forward and build a future. I believe he has a better chance of that here in Melbourne than he will ever have in Perth.

What I worry though, that this is just him running away from his problems back in Perth because the place he's living in now is not working out anymore, thinking that Melbourne will be this yellow brick road, not really having a plan, and if all else fails, at least mum will be here to save him if things don't go the way he wants.

So...

what would you do if you were me?