No touch events on child view controller - ios

Question

Alright so I am trying to create a slide out side view for navigation in my app, similar to Facebook and many others. I have that part working but the navigation controller doesn't respond to any touch events. I have a feeling this is because I am having my subclassed Navigation Controller add the child view controller and subview, instead of having the present view display the child. Here is the code I run on my "FeaturedViewController" that calls to "MainNavigationController" to add "MenuViewController" as a child of "MainNavigationController"
//ignoring compiler error as we know the parentViewController will be of type MainNavigationController at runtime.
MainNavigationController *main = self.parentViewController;
if (self.categories != nil)
main.categories = self.categories;
if (main.showingLeftPanel)
[main movePanelToOriginalPosition];
else
[main movePanelRight];
From there:
- (void)movePanelRight // to show left panel
{
UIView *childView = [self getLeftView];
//_leftPanelViewController.categories = self.categories;
[self.view sendSubviewToBack:childView];
[UIView animateWithDuration:SLIDE_TIMING delay:0 options:UIViewAnimationOptionBeginFromCurrentState
animations:^{
_centerViewController.view.frame = CGRectMake(self.view.frame.size.width - PANEL_WIDTH, 0, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height);
}
completion:^(BOOL finished) {
if (finished) {
//_centerViewController.leftButton.tag = 0;
}
}];
}
- (UIView *)getLeftView
{
// init view if it doesn't already exist
if (_leftPanelViewController == nil)
{
// this is where you define the view for the left panel
_leftPanelViewController = [self.storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:#"MenuViewController"];
[self addChildViewController:_leftPanelViewController];
[self.view addSubview:_leftPanelViewController.view];
[_leftPanelViewController didMoveToParentViewController:self];
_leftPanelViewController.view.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, self.view.frame.size.width, self.view.frame.size.height);
}
_leftPanelViewController.categories = self.categories;
self.showingLeftPanel = YES;
// set up view shadows
[self showCenterViewWithShadow:YES withOffset:-2];
UIView *view = self.leftPanelViewController.view;
return view;
}