As it turns out, it was not a problem with how I was "creating" the modules and the parent/child relationship. The problem was my understanding of inheritance.

After some more reading, I went back and rewrote them. I had originally written one big module and tried to then make smaller children from it.

As my ex would attest, I have a problem making children.

Now that I have changed my expectation and no longer expect this parent/child structure to work like one big module, everything started falling into place.

Thank you all for your help in getting me here.