Create Menu Option

This really involves two problems, but maybe they're source related:

I am still getting my feet wet with Drupal, but I've searched high and low and I'm not sure with this one. So thank you in advance for taking the time to read this, since I'm sure this must be something really simple to address. Maybe you can help me out with this, cuz I didn't realized that Node Hiearchies actually had the option to create menus until now, and I can't find it.

1) Basically, the problem that I am having is that I don't see or even have the option to "Create a Menu" anywhere under the Node Hiearchies section after clicking "edit" for a node, as specified in the documentation, for any type of node. I was wondering if there are any settings I may have missed that may cause this option to not show up at all, though I have checked with both Parent and Children specified node types. Permissions are all set, and I do not believe that I am using any modules that are in conflict with Node Hierarchy. I do not currently have the Views Integration feature enabled, but I have tried with it both on and off.

2) I'm also having the problem of children entries not being in the array returned $node variable when I try a print_r. But a node's option tab 'Children', will correctly list and display the node's children. Normally one would access this through php by simply using $node->children am I correct? A node's parent, however, when prompted with $node->parent is correctly returning nid.

So either way, it seems I am unable to generate a menu either through Node Hiearchy or through custom written code insertion...

Pls and thank you all for your help ;-;