Simple button navigation help

Here's the scenario. I have a movieclip within the main clip called "playPause" which starts with the Pause button shown. When clicked the movie clip moves to show the play button and pauses the current parent movie with the AS "_parent.stop();" when the play button is then pressed the movie plays via "_parent.play();" and reverts back to showing the pause button.

Simple so far. What is getting me is if I add a movie clip within the parent (say some scrolling object) I cannot get the added clip to pause. For example say the "parent" movie clip the playPause moveclip is within is called "intro" and the moving object is called "introObject" which is embedded in a frame along with "playPause"

What I have setup for the playPause buttons is for pausing
_root.introObject.stop();

and playing
_root.introObject.play();

But at this point the object just simply keeps moving ignoring the code. Seems simple, but I am obviously missing something

Still needing help if anyone could. Doesn't seem like it is too difficult to create actionscript to stop a child movie within the main one, but I can't figure it out.