Animating UI (4.6) parameters is creating garbage keyframes on child objects

I'm currently unable to create the screen transition I'm trying to because of what seems like a pretty debilitating animation bug. The situation is a summary screen with a backplate, a "Stage Cleared" message, clear time, stars collected and a little panel to earn you extra coins. I am trying to animate all the elements coming from off screen.

The frustrating thing is that I can only animate the Stage Cleared message and the backplate without garbage keyframes appearing on child object parameters. As soon as I, say, add a parameter to animate the stars collected object's position, all transform parameters for the three stars (children of the stars collected object) appear in the animation editor with keyframes. What makes this really smell like a bug is that dragging the time scrubber around the timeline has a tendency to create more of these garbage keyframes.

Just for reference sake. I have tried creating new, empty container objects in which to nest the problematic ones but this hasn't helped.