AS-3 - Disable Sprite + All its Children

AS-3 - Disable Sprite + All its Children

I thought I could use visible = false; to disable a bunch of sprites that
are on the stage and when I need them to enable them with visible = true;.
Well this doesn't work although the parent sprite is not visible the
children are not drawn the value of this property remains true. I miss the
possibility of disabling sprites on the stage.
How could I:
disable a sprite with all its children
enable a sprite with all its children
not remove it from stage
?
If there is nothing build-in in Flash I will have to think of my own
disabling technique.


The problems resulting from this:
I can't check easily if children are disabled: if (visibile)
events of children of a disabled parent are still firing when movie / game
continues.