How to get a single Text component from one of multiple children all containing Text components

There are many ways.

1) You could set up a public reference in the inspector instead of using GetComponent:

  public Text mText;

2) Almost the samething as method 1, but use a serialized private reference:

 [SerializeField]
 private Text mText;

3) Or if the text component has a unique name, then you could do a search for it:

   Text mText = GameObject.Find("MyUniqueTextName").GetComponent<Text>();

4) You could also create a dummy script that you can search for with GetComponent or GetComponentInChildren:

   public class UniqueIdentifierSample : MonoBehaviour {
   }

then in your script:

  Text mText = GetComponentInChildren<UniqueIdentifierSample>().GetComponent<Text>();

5) Let the component set itself to the parent:

  GetComponentInParent<MyScript>().mText = this;

There are more ways, such as using a singleton manager class to stores the references, but these examples should be enough. I think the 1st method is probably the easist solution. Just make a public reference and set it up in the inspector.