pager.showChild does not fire when called from parent page 'afterShow' event

[hereswhatidid]

I'm trying to initiate a default sub-page dynamically by attaching a function to the afterShow event that will loop through the child pages, determine if any are already visible, and if none are then show the first available child page.

I'm able to get the child pages from the afterShow event without any problems but a call to pager.showChild( route ) does not function nor does it cause an error. If I manually call the pager.showChild( route ) with the same route as that found in the afterShow event function, it works properly.

Are the child pages not initiated at that point in the event chain?