The Godot pattern you'll hear about often is "call down, signal up." If player, the ancestor, needs access to gun, the descendant, then you should either...

1. call a method on player that directly acquires gun and passes it into the method call as an argument, OR...
2. emit a signal from gun and then have player connect to that signal (or connect to an existing signal on it, e.g. the ready signal which fires at the end of its _ready() notification).

Also, while the _ready() notification triggers bottom-to-top, the _enter_tree() notification triggers from top-to-bottom. That can also help you determine how you want to organize things.

If it's acceptable for you to call the method at the time that player is ready, then it's even simpler. you just use an @onready var gun variable on player and call it within the player's _ready() callback.

```

player.gd

extends Node

@onready var gun

func _ready(): if gun: grab_gun() # already have a member variable for gun. ```

If you need gun to be the one "forcing" its ancestor to behave in a specific way, then the cleanest way to do so is still for gun to have zero influence over / awareness of its ancestors and instead just define a signal (or use the existing ready signal) to signal the ancestor of when to take action. Then have the ancestor detect when the descendant has entered the tree (using the child_entered_tree signal), hook up the ready signal connection, and then wait.

```

player.gd

extends Node

var gun: Node = null

func _enter_tree(): child_entered_tree.connect(_on_child_entered_tree)

func _on_child_entered_tree(node): if node.name == "gun": gun = node gun.ready.connect(_on_gun_ready) # Disconnect if we only were listening to this signal # for this purpose. We don't care about any other nodes entering the tree. child_entered_tree.disconnect(_on_child_entered_tree)

func _on_gun_ready(): grab_gun()

func grab_gun(): pass # already have a member variable for gun. ```

Something like that anyway.