Knowing the measuredWidth sooner

Question

Hi there !
In one of my components (subclass of VBox) I'm overriding the AddChild so I can add the pending child to a private list. Then I'm using this list during the UpdateDisplayList to add those child to a sub HBox component (which is display in the main component).
I doing it like so (simplified version...)
override public function addChild(child:DisplayObject):DisplayObject
     displayedItems.addItem(UIComponent(child));
     invalidateDisplayList();
     return UIComponent(child);
But it's time for flex to go to updateDisplayList(), my new child is still not initiazided completely, therefore i can't use its measuredWidth.
It works fine if i'm replacing the invalidate call by currentHBox.addChild(child). The child is correctly updated by the time my updateDisplayList is automatically called. But I would like to initialize it with just the basic functions and call updateDisplayList myself. Is it possible ?
Note that i tried a lot of things before asking (validateSize, validateNow, callLater + invalidate method ...) Mastering the Flex framework workflow is definitly a hard work
Thank you

Answer 1

Hey thanks for your answer. It's always a pleasure to get helped by the ReAL TeAm
Shall i use createChildren in my case ? Or you were just noticing this ? createChildren is called just once at the initialization right ?
I tried this instead :
displayedItems.addItem(UIComponent(child));
UIComponentGlobals.layoutManager.validateClient(UIComponent(child), true);
invalidateDisplayList();
return UIComponent(child);
But it doesn't look like it helps... Have you more recommendations for what i'm trying to do ? (please see my previous post http://forums.adobe.com/thread/447375?tstart=30 )