Yeah, I wanted to let my daughter have that (probably mythical) "normal" childhood, too. But it didn't work, as much as we (initially) tried to force normalcy upon her.
In fact, I was so determined to do things this way, particularly after getting some "advice" from well-meaning family about
preventing school problems created by having an early reader (!!).... so we, um... basically did what we could do
prevent my child from learning to read... keeping her from educational television with any phonics instruction as much as we could, not buying any early readers or allowing her to check them out at the library, etc.
Yeah. My kid finally started teaching herself to read using whole language methods ANYWAY at age 3 (apparently after she gave up asking us to teach her), and we finally gave in because it seemed the lesser of evils (often whole-language learners have problems with later decoding or spelling, so phonemic awareness is a better strategy for the longer-term).
Yeah. If my then-barely-4yo wasn't 'ready' then I don't know what was. It was like applying a match to a massive beacon pyre. She was reading early chapter books within a month or two, and before six months was up, she was reading silently, fluently, and whatever she could get her hands on. She read Magic Tree House books at the rate of four or five a DAY. Before a year was up, she was reading Harry Potter on the sly, having
helped herself to it on the bookshelf.
Truly, parents that say things like that have no clue. Reading "instruction?" Oh, sure. Yes, if I am entirely forthcoming, yes. We taught her. We spent a little over two weeks, in fact. Seriously. I have proof in the form of the little set of books that we used. I wrote dates in them. 
