Parent Script accessing Child components

Hello, I'm working on a game w$$anonymous$$ch uses guided missiles to destroy planes, to do t$$anonymous$$s each plane's parent has a small box collider and a c$$anonymous$$ld w$$anonymous$$ch has a large sphere collider when the missile enters the large sphere collider it uses transform.LookAt to hone in on the plane. In the plane script (on the parent object with the box collider) when the missile $$anonymous$$ts the box collider it triggers the plane to explode (in theory) by using t$$anonymous$$s

  void OnTriggerEnter (Collider other)
         {
     
                 if(other.gameObject.tag == "HGP_64")
                 {
                     HeavyMissileDamage();
                 }
     }

However what's happening is the script above on the parent object is using the sphere collider on the c$$anonymous$$ld object to detect the missile therefore resulting in the plane exploding way before the missile $$anonymous$$ts. How can I stop the parent from accessing the c$$anonymous$$lds collider?