Change text of dynamically placed Movie Clip

programming flash
1

ok i have a tabbed news module that adds tabs dynamically based on how many items are in a XML file. Everything on it works fine except for the tabs im loading them out of the library and placing them in a movieclip in the stage. Each tab movie clip has a property in it called tabTitle this is a dynamic text field. The problem is when i try to edit the text element of this textfield it doesn’t show up. but if i trace tabTitle.text it traces the correct string. Heres my code:

var widthTracker:Number = 5;
var tabs:tab = new tab();
function buildTabs(titles:String, index:int):void
{
	tabs = new tab();
	tabs.name = "tabs" + String(index);
	tabs.tabTitle.text = titles;
	tabs.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function (e:MouseEvent):void
																   {
																	   changeSelected(index);
																	   myTimer.reset();
																	   myTimer.start();
																	   timeSlidder.gotoAndPlay(0);
																	   picTracker = index;
																   })
	tabs.y = 0;
	tabs.x = widthTracker;
	widthTracker += 80;
	tabSlidder.tabHolder.addChild(tabs);
}