Looping through all controls problem

[Echooff3]

I’m working on a security function that changes the state of a control based on your user role. So a control can be set to visible/invisible and enables/disabled based on the login’s user role. I wrote a function than iterates through every control on a form, then applies my security rules and then re-runs the function for the current controls controlscollection.

Private Sub ApplySecurity (pCtl as Control)
    ‘… apply security based on what’s the control’s tag …
 
    If pCtl.HasChildren Then
        For Each ctl as Control In pCtl.Controls
            ApplySecurity(ctl)
        Next    
    End If
End Sub
 

Now here’s the rub.

Controls like the tabcontrol and toolstrip access their children via an Items collection. So checking pCtl.HasChildren on a toolstrip comes up false.

How can I go about checking if controls like these have children without having to use a CType(pCtl,toolstrip).DropDown.Items.Count > 0 ???

Is there a specific interface that these controls are built on so I can CType it and test via a Children/Items property?