Key focus on children of custom component

I'm having a hard time getting a widget/component inside a custom component to get keypresses. I found that calling setFocus in the custom component's Init() doesn't fix this. Here's an example:

<component name="MyScreen" extends="Group">
  <children>
        <LabelList
          id="Labels"
          vertFocusAnimationStyle = "floatingFocus" >
          <ContentNode role="content">
            <ContentNode title="Label1" />
            <ContentNode title="Label2" />
            <ContentNode title="Label3" />
          </ContentNode>           
        </LabelList>
  </children>
</component>

I've tried a number of ways to get the keypresses to move the item selection on the LabelList content and the only thing that seems to work for me is the following hack.

Function Init()
  m.LabelGroup = m.top.findNode("Labels")
  m.setFocusOnce = false
End Function

Function onKeyEvent(key As String, press As Boolean)
  if not m.setFocusOnce then
    m.LabelGroup.setFocus(true)
    m.setFocusOnce = true
  endif
  return false
End Function

After this, the focus stays on the LabelGroup and works as expected, but I have to call it once AFTER the init() for it to gain focus. What am i missing? Something regarding construction order or the nodes?