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This story originally appeared in the August issue of Flourish.

"There goes my Mother of the Year award again." When my daughter Lily was 18 months old, I let her help me move the clothes from the washer into the dryer. I set the controls and turned just in time to witness her biting into a Tide Action Pack. I wiped her mouth out with a dry wash cloth, gave her a glass of milk and called the Poison Control Hotline (800-222-1222). The nurse counseled me to just watch her and that she would probably be fine.

Thankfully, she was.

Most parents know to spring into action when they catch their child consuming detergent or another toxic substance. They also try to do their best to prevent these events from occurring by locking cabinets and storing chemicals out of their children's reach. But how many suspect that medicine -- something that is supposed to makes us better -- could make a child so sick?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among children emergency room visits for medication poisonings are twice as common as poisonings from other household products (such as cleaning solutions and personal care products).

Dr. Beverly Brown, a pediatrician with Cape Physician Associates, says that sometimes poisoning can occur when parents try to speed up the healing process. The parent might think she can get the child well faster if a 10-day course of antibiotics is completed in three days. Dr. Brown says mistakes also happen when parents don't understand the dosage directions. While sometimes the misunderstandings are due to a language barrier, there are many occasions when just speaking with the pharmacist would clear things up.

Of course, an overdose isn't always caused by medicine prescribed to the child. The culprit may be medicine prescribed to the parents or another family member. Another time I knew I lost my Mother of the Year award, my son Eli, then 2, had swiped some of my daily medication while I was getting a glass of water. I quickly scanned the counter and realized the pill that was missing was my birth control pill, which happened to be rather M&M-like in appearance. The poison control hotline advised me to watch and wait. Eli had no ill effects. But these accidental ingestions are frequently not benign.

Dr. David Meece of SoutheastHEALTH's Emergency Department, lists the following signs that a child needs immediate medical attention for poisoning: having seizures, being markedly sleepy, experiencing respiratory distress, having a change in mental status (for example, behaving as if they are drunk) and/or vomiting. At the ER, they can stabilize the child and assess how to counteract the substance that has been ingested. Dr. Meece says kids are very resilient, so most times if they survive the initial incident, they will recover well. However, in some cases there can be lasting damage to the kidneys, liver, GI tract, lungs, heart or brain.

The National Poison Control Center advises that medicines are safe to use as recommended -- the right medicine, in the right dose, to the right person, in the right amount, and at the right time. Otherwise, medicines can be poisonous.

Here are some steps you can take to avoid medicinal poisoning -- and keep yourself in the running for that Mother of the Year Award:

* Always read labels before giving medicine.

* Don't let children watch adults taking medicine.

* Call medicines and vitamins by their proper names. Do not refer to them as candy.

* Keep all medicines out of the reach of young children.

* Use child-resistant packages, but remember that nothing is childproof.

* Use cabinet locks and store potential poisons in high cabinets.