Text Not Being Displayed above Instantiated Prefabs

I have a timer being displayed above my enemy sprites that count down consistently. The trouble is it doesn't work with prefabs that are instantiated in runtime. If I drag the prefab into the scene before running, the timer will show up just fine but those spawned in by my spawner script display nothing.

This is on the enemy character object:

public float lifetime; public Text textField;
public string timeLeft; enemyTextScript myScript; public GameObject myTextMesh;

 // Use this for initialization
 void Start () {

     myScript = gameObject.GetComponentInChildren(typeof(enemyTextScript)) as enemyTextScript;

 }

 // Update is called once per frame
 void Update () {

     lifetime -= Time.deltaTime;
     timeLeft = lifetime.ToString ("F2");
     textField = GetComponent<Text>();
     timeLeft = lifetime.ToString ("F2");

     myScript.report(timeLeft);


     if (lifetime <= 0) {
         Destroy (gameObject);
         lifeTime.instance.lifetime += 2f; 

     }
 }


 void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D col){
     if (col.gameObject.tag == "pAttack") {
         if (col.gameObject.name == "slash(Clone)") {
             lifetime -= 3f;

         }
         if (col.gameObject.name == "shuriken(Clone)") {
             lifetime -= 5f;
         }

     }
 }

 void reportTime(){
     timeLeft = lifetime.ToString ("F2");
 }

And this is on the text object, a child of the enemy (and part of a canvas)

public Text textField; public string timeL;

 // Use this for initialization
 void Start () {

 
     textField = GetComponent<Text>();


 }

 // Update is called once per frame
 void Update () {

     textField = GetComponent<Text>();

     textField.text = ("" + timeL);
 }
     

 public void report(string time){
     textField.text = ("" + time);
 }

Thank you for any help you can offer, it's much appreciated.