jQuery: click function exclude children.

To do this, stop the click on the child using .stopPropagation:

$(".example").click(function(){
  $(this).fadeOut("fast");
}).children().click(function(e) {
  return false;
});

This will stop the child clicks from bubbling up past their level so the parent won’t receive the click.

.not() is used a bit differently, it filters elements out of your selector, for example:

<div class="bob" id="myID"></div>
<div class="bob"></div>

$(".bob").not("#myID"); //removes the element with myID

For clicking, your problem is that the click on a child bubbles up to the parent, not that you’ve inadvertently attached a click handler to the child.