Accessing Nested MovieClips

Hello, I’m fairly new to AS3 and going through the woes of moving from AS2 on a new app. I have a mc(which has my buttons and instance names) in the library, which I attach to the stage. I’ve added a faux linkage class as StickyNote. But I’m having issue accessing those button instances so I can add events etc.

navCont.addChild(new StickyNote());
trace(navCont.getChildByName('eventsbtn'));

The nav appears and the button rollovers function, but the trace comes back null. I’ve also tried just straight dot notation, no luck.