I think you're going to have to choose whether you would rather control access and censor capabilities or know what they're up to.
It's easy to find the software capable of both, but I doubt an intelligent difficult child would think you were savvy enough to figure out sophisticated controls but not enough to figure out how to monitor their activities. It's a one-time opportunity. If they get the drift that you are educating yourself on the subject, they'll never again believe you are clueless.
As for gvcmom's monitoring of e-mails, please be careful. It's too easy to set up as many e-mail accounts as anybody wants to, through yahoo, hotmail, or many other providers. And the tight censorship of sites and capabilities? It just doesn't work anymore, unless your difficult child never leaves the house. Internet is too accessible at almost every household in America as well as most cellphones. Even if difficult child doesn't have a cellphone, they have many friends who do.
I really think it's dangerous to believe you're protecting your difficult child by restricting what goes on with your own computer.
My experience is that to have a false sense of security lands you much flatter on the pavement that to have none. A determined difficult child WILL work around your restrictions.
