I had an interview with Kathryn Esplin-Oleski for her page on the social networking site Gather. Her article is part of a series of articles on the Five Moms. Here is a selection from Kathryn’s article: I spoke with Blaise recently. In our conversation, she shared a few tips for parents to prevent cough medicine abuse.

1. Be sure old medicines in the cabinet are thrown away. Keep your own medicine in a separate place, away from the kids’ medicines. If I have [cough] medicine for me, I will make sure it is not all over the house. I keep my own medicine in my room.
2. Talk with your kids – make sure they know you are aware of what they are doing. Parents will walk into a room and see cough medicine, and they will think nothing of it. By my being aware of cough medicine abuse and by making my kids know I am aware, I’ve made sure my kids know they can’t pull the wool over my eyes.
3. My kids and I have a dialogue all the time. They tell me how they feel about cough medicine abuse. When I am talking to my kids, you might think they aren’t hearing me, but really, they are hearing me and they are listening to what Im saying. And this dialogue leads to other conversations – not just about cough medicine abuse, but also to conversations about many things. A dialogue is really a part of keeping your kids safe in other respects. When people say, “talk to your children” many times kids will eat dinner, then sit down to watch TV. There is no dialogue there. You need to sit down with your kids. Find out as much information as you can about what your kids are thinking.
4. Another way you can protect your kids is to monitor what they are seeing on the Internet. Click on the History tabs on your browser and on the URL buttons on your computer to see what they are reading and watching. This is where you start talking to your kids about what they are reading, what they are thinking. These are all things we talk about on Five Moms.