Absolute Noob to flash

Somebody please help me. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I can’t seem to animate a person properly. I don’t really know how to be specific as I am a newb at flash, but I can say that I’ve read many a million flash tutorials all around the net, and I can’t seem to find anything that I understand. I have had flash for months, and I just don’t get it. I can say that the tutorials I’ve read about animation are little to none, but they do point out that I have to have each limb in a layer, and a symbol. The problem is, that when I go to the playhead and test it out, I get the same result: the limbs appear to move off of the torso, and aren’t attached to the torso at all. It looks really bad, I don’t know where to post this, as I just joined the forums yesterday, but any help would be appreciated. Please someone tell me, how to animate using tween animation, because when I do it, I get the same result, the god forsaken dotted line. Somebody help. Thanks.