Parents have to be constantly on the lookout for issues with their children, regardless of their age. Younger and older children have different problems to deal with, and teens are an entirely different species. Parents with kids in high school have to keep their eyes open to a whole host of potential problems, which is exactly why Ashley Banks had to deal with a recent outburst from her mother.
The 16-year-old high schooler from Texas was, by all accounts, a normal, healthy girl. One day, she sent a simple text message to her mother asking for a favor. One of Ashley’s friends needed to borrow her graphing calculator, but Ashley was out of the house, so she asked her mother to go get the calculator from her room and put it in the mailbox for her friend to come by and pick up. When her mom went into Ashley’s room, she got a shock that clearly left her both scared and angry.
In the bottom of Ashley’s nightstand drawer, where the calculator was supposed to be, was a small plastic baggie filled with several multicolored pills. Her mother could not believe her eyes. Ashley had never been the type to act out, so it was appalling that she would have some sort of mystery drug in their home. She texted her daughter right away, demanding to know what they were and insisting that she return home immediately for her punishment.
However, it turns out that Ashley was much more innocent than her mother imagined. Ashley responded with something her mother didn’t expect at all. Her daughter merely laughed it off, claiming they weren’t drugs. She then asked her mother to go put the pills in some water. Shocked and confused, her mother asked why she should do that, but Ashley insisted. A few moments later, her mother texted once again, this time with an apology and a photo of the results.
The pills had expanded into small, spongy dinosaurs. They were from a kid’s toy called Magic Grow Capsules. The ‘pills’ were no more than a water soluble capsule holding a small sponge-shaped dinosaur. Once she realized her daughter wasn’t on drugs, she apologized for the misunderstanding. She also told Ashley that she didn’t have to come back home, since she wasn’t punished. Her mother did throw a small jab in before the conversation ended, questioning why her 16-year-old daughter would buy something for ages 4 and up? Ashley simply answered that she thought they looked cool.
Of course, Ashley had to share her experience on social media, and it quickly went viral. So far, it has been shared more than 30,000 times. Many people can probably relate to a similar situation where their parents got upset over something that turned out to be fine. You might even be a parent who has done something similar to your child. At least in the case of Ashley and her mother, other people can get a laugh from the situation just by seeing screens of the texts sent back and forth between them.
The truth behind this story is that Ashley’s mother cares about her very much, and she ultimately only wanted to protect her daughter. Parents can certainly understand this feeling, and as long as they don’t cross the line into over-protecting their children, or sheltering them from the real world, they are successfully doing their job. It can certainly be hard to avoid jumping to conclusions as a parent, especially when you find a baggie of something that looks like pills in your daughter’s nightstand. Even if she did ask you to go through the nightstand for her in the first place.