Hard time building custom XML driven popout menu

Hello, I’m trying to make an XML driven popout menu (click a menu item to open its submenu) and have run into a snag. I haven’t figured out how to “hide” elements that aren’t supposed to be on the screen.

The menu is constructed completely out of TextFields based on the structure of a simple XML file. I added Event Listeners to each of the TextFields but I can’t figure out how to make those TextFields go away when they are not supposed to be seen.

I have tried to add each TextField onto a common DisplayObject and the use container.removeChild to remove the TextFields that shouldn’t be there but I keep getting errors telling me that the target of removeChild must belong to the caller. So how do I manage the visibility of menu items based on mouse clicks in a menu?

I’ve attached the specific AS file (SOMAMenu.as) that handles the menu if anyone finds that helpful.

If for some reason you think you need the FLA to help I’ve attached that in a ZIP file but be warned I couldn’t totally preserve folder structure because I’m building this application ultimately as a multi-touch computer application so there are a lot of other unrelated files that are not included.

Every bit of the code for the menu is in the SOMAMenu.as file.