_parent not working

Hi, this is a newbie question so it’s probably easy for most of you to answer.

I have a movie clip that has the following code:

on (release) {
_root.rightMenu_mc.gotoAndStop(“Animation”);
}

It works fine the way it is but I read that it is better to use relatives paths rather than _root all the time but when I change it to _parent.rightMenu_mc.gotoAndStop(“Animation”); it doesn’t work anymore. Can anyone explain and help me out with this? Thanks!