Yeah, I'm aware of all that. It would would be more accurate to say that the modern IA languages come from the Prakrits rather than Sanskrit, or perhaps you could call it "Old Indo-Aryan" as I sometimes do.

I often say that "Sanskrit is the ancestor of the modern IA languages" because I find that it's usually easier than trying to explain the reality that Sanskrit was a highly formalized language that virtually no one would have spoken as a first language, especially to a layperson. I know that the statement is not accurate, but frankly if I stop to explain this every time I bring up the relationship between modern Hindi and the various Prakrits/dialects of Old Indo-Aryan in a conversation, then I find that more often than not it detracts from my broader point (unless the point is that Sanskrit is not the direct ancestor of Hindi, in which case I would try to explain all of this)

I think of it as similar to saying "Latin is the ancestor of the Romance languages". That statement is not far from the truth, but it omits a key detail: Vulgar Latin, specifically, is the origin of the Romance languages, as opposed to Classical Latin, which was also a highly formalized language that virtually no one would have spoken as a first language. And yet, when laypeople talk about "Latin", they usually mean either Classical Latin or Ecclesiastical Latin, neither of which is the direct ancestor of the Romance languages. From that point of view, you could say it's misleading to say that "Latin" is the ancestor, because that might lead one to believe that Classical Latin is the ancestor when it's not. But I usually don't hear anyone label this statement as misleading, I think because it's a useful way to convey the idea to people who might not know much about the subject. A layperson might have some idea of what "Latin" is, but they may have no real concept of "Vulgar Latin".

All of this to say, I am aware of the "truth" in this regard, but I have my own reasons for obscuring it somewhat in order to make things easier to understand. You don't have to agree with my rationale, but hopefully you can at least see why I said what I said while knowing it wasn't a "true" statement.