Well, I decided to be smart and learn about how to create child themes instead of continuing to hack at Edu Clean. :D

For the most part, my baby steps have been wildly successful! But I'm having trouble with my child functions.php that I hope someone can shed some light on.

As I understand it, unlike my other child files, my child function.php will add to parent function.php rather than replace it (as with how a child footer.php would replace the parent footer.php).

My parent theme already has four widget areas. I want to add three more. I got it working when I placed my three new widget areas into parent function.php, and now I'm trying to move them into child function.php.

So far, I've tried doing this six different ways:

1. Placing just the code for my three new widgets into child function.php
2. Placing all of the original Register Widget code into child function.php
3. Place just the code for my three widgets, but wrapped in the same code that the original widgets are wrapped in:

function edus_widgets_init() {
global $bp_existed;
...
}
}
add_action( 'widgets_init', 'edus_widgets_init' );

And I tried each of these options wrapped in php tags, and without

All attempts give me an error: The code in child function.php appears in all its glory at the top of both my admin screen and my site. It ain't pretty.

I've read a few tutorials on working with child function.php, but have not found the guidance I need.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks everybody!