Can I lock her up like Rapunzel?

I am pretty conservative, but I've never thought of myself as overly conservative. In fact, I would have thought I was barely on the conservative scale. In the past few weeks, however, I am beginning to wonder if I am unreasonably restrictive. My daughter is four. Four years old to me is still very young. I still have her watch Sesame Street with her brother and honestly I think it is extremely age appropriate. She is learning to read and such- sesame street is ALL about this. Most of her friends haven't watched that show in a couple years. Shows I think meant for tweens are now apparently being watched by most of her friends. Take, for example, Hannah Montana. Certainly it isn't a bad show, I just happen to think it isn't appropriate for a four year old.

She's also started to tell me her friends are claiming to have boyfriends. One of these friends from church is the youngest of a very large family. They are a family that home schools. I would have thought they would be MORE conservative than I am, yet their daughter is talking to mine about her boyfriend and going on dates. The other little girl is a friend from school. She told Ava she is "in love" with a boy in their class and wants Ava to ask him to be her boyfriend. Ava didn't want to do this, so she asked me about it. We had a good conversation and I think I handled it fairly well. I told her these girls were funny (not in a demeaning way). We talked about what a boyfriend was and I told her she didn't and shouldn't really have boyfriends until she's ready to get married because the REASON for having a boyfriend is looking for a husband. She laughed and said, "four year olds aren't ready to get married. why do they want boyfriends?"

On one hand, I can tell myself this isn't a huge deal, but I have to admit the larger part of me wants to pull my daughter out of preschool and sunday school and just keep her safe and innocent at home. I just don't love the idea of my young child learning thing from other kids. Shoot- I hate the idea. I appreciate that she so far has come to me when she is wondering about these things, but how long before she doesn't tell me everything?

We live in a crazy, hard world that is very sinful in a lot of ways. I know I cannot protect her from that forever, I was just really hoping to keep her innocent as long as possible. Certainly I get that many people reading this will think I am a little bit of a nut job. I know a boyfriend and Hannah Montana are bad things. No "harm" has come to my child. It isn't about these issues in particular as much as realizing that kids are growing up faster and faster. If they have "boyfriends" at four years old, what will they be interested in at 12 years old?

Can't we just stay focused on letters and princess play a little bit longer?!