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Blog > Hilda Morales-Roybal

Hilda Morales-Roybal

Mother of four and foster parent
Educator
San Antonio, Texas

I got involved in the Five Moms campaign to help other parents know and learn about medicine abuse.

One of the best memories that I've had in being involved with the Five Moms campaign is meeting other moms such as yourself and learning about all the different problems that we face in today's world as mothers.

But most of all and learning about how to teach other moms to prevent their children from starting on cough medicine abuse. I  would ask other parents, mothers, fathers, guardians to be careful, to look in their homes, to look for all those signs of their children abusing medicine.

 And to take accountability and have talks with their children about drug abuse, about failing in school and succeeding in life.

Before moving to central Texas, I had lived in the border town of El Paso for most of my life. The flow of drugs into the country from Mexico was a constant topic of conversation, and a problem on the minds of most local parents. So for my family and I, stories of drug abuse and overdoses were incredibly common. I thought I had heard it all—until someone told me that teens were abusing over-the-counter cough medicines.

The reality was, I could imagine kids abusing anything but cough medicines. I was shocked, but what was most shocking was that this was a growing problem within my own community, and I had no idea it was happening.

I have a fantastic relationship with my four children, and talk to them about everything. I have also been a foster parent to eleven children over the last several years. I am an educator, working with families and children in the San Antonio area on a daily basis. And yet with all of this contact with my own children, foster children, and the local community, I was still clueless.

I was left with one question: If a mother of four, foster mother of many, and local educator was unaware that cough medicine abuse was a problem, how many other parents are in the dark? The numbers are too high to imagine, which is why I’ve joined the Five Moms Campaign.

I am the first in my family to graduate high school, and the first to get a college education. I am living my dream, working as an educator and helping to provide Hispanic-American families and children with the same great opportunities that I was fortunate enough to have as a child. But my greatest accomplishment is simply being a mother.

Two of my kids are grown, and I have two still at home: my 11-year-old and my 10-year-old. My 10-year-old loves sports, while my 11-year-old loves to draw and loves school. I love spending time with them, playing basketball or just sharing breakfast together. I’m really aware of how important it is to be a role model for them. I think they look to me for advice, and for inspiration about how to live life and succeed. That’s a huge responsibility that I take very seriously.

Today’s teens are faced with a world of challenges and negative influences that we as parents could never have imagined years ago: online predators, violence on television, and now a host of new types of drugs being abused. Sometimes it feels like our job as parents is just to try and keep up with the changing times. I hope that the Five Moms Campaign will help parents do that.