Yep, that's what is happening.
YOU, sirs, are good.

Andy and Ryan both nailed it.

Thank you. This needs to be put in a good place where people will find it, if it is not already. I searched for it in the PDLdoc but only found a reference to parent in the index, and not to this effect. I'm not sure most people would think to go through the parent, since EL is usually a direct reference to the object immediately at hand.

Perhaps in the "Nesting of composite components" section?

https://javaserverfaces.dev.java.net/nonav/docs/2.0/pdldocs/facelets/index.html

On Tue, 2009-09-08 at 09:59 -0700, Ryan Lubke wrote:
--
Lincoln Baxter, III
Co-Founder of OcpSoft
Author of PrettyFaces URL Rewriting for JSF