MouseArea stole QML element's mouse events

You have to enable the MouseArea to propagate the composed events like clicked or released to the underneath component, as described by @Torgeirl's answer.

If you want your TextEdit, Slider or CheckBox to receive these kind of events, simply pass through the event by setting its accepted property to false.

Sample code:

RowLayout {
    TextEdit { text: "Hi" }
    Slider {}
    CheckBox { text: "CheckBox"}

    MouseArea {
        anchors.fill: parent
        propagateComposedEvents: true

        onClicked: mouse.accepted = false;
        onPressed: mouse.accepted = false;
        onReleased: mouse.accepted = false;
        onDoubleClicked: mouse.accepted = false;
        onPositionChanged: mouse.accepted = false;
        onPressAndHold: mouse.accepted = false;
    }
}

There is the property propagateComposedEvents which allows a MouseArea to let through mouse events such as clicked(). You have to set event.accepted = false in the event handler.

Please, see the documentation for MouseArea and the property propagateComposedEvents for more information and example.

You can try something like this for your particular case:

Rectangle
{
   MouseArea 
   {
      id: mouseAreaTop
      anchors.fill: parent 
      OnClicked: { /* do something */ }
   }

   TextEdit 
   {
      /* Do whatever  */       
   }
}

Note that I have arranged these in an order. All children will have higher z than parent. Siblings coming later in the tree for a parent, have higher z values.

General idea is like this :

1. Define all the mouse areas
2. Arrange them on the z values

Read about z property here in the Qt documentation, you will be able to understand how to arrange the mouse areas.

eg:

Parent
{
    anchors.fill: parent
    child1
    {
        anchors.fill: parent
        z: 2
    }

    child2
    {
        anchors.fill: parent
        z: 1
    }

    child3
    {
        anchors.fill: parent
        z: 4
    }

    child4
    {
        anchors.fill: parent
        z: 3
    }
}

In this example i have overridden the natural ordering by assigning the z values myself.