Movieclip depths?

Hi guys,
I think what I’m going to ask will have some of you laugh at me. I thought I knew more about Flash than I apparently do. Or maybe it’s just me that at right this minute can’t cope with anything, but here’s the thing…

I want to create a menu.
This menu is a movieclip that stands, say, in the bottom part of the screen.
To open the menu, you will have to roll over it. Thus, I have the usual
onRollOver and onRollOut events…
This will have the menu mc go upwards when onRollOver, and vice versa on rollOut…
Question is… I have buttons (or movieclips that function as buttons) inside the menu mc. But they won’t be clickable, because the mouse still gets the onRollOver/out actions from the menu mc.
I thought I had to use the getNextHighestDepth() as to get thru, but no matter what I do, I can’t get it to work, the buttons in the mc will not “be seen”…
I’m not sure you’ll get what I mean, I could post an example if you need one.
Please help cause I’m freaking out here!
Cheers,
C