I have a node data structure defined as below and was not sure the find_matching_node method is pythonic or efficient. I am not well versed with generators but think there might be better solution using them. Any ideas?

class HierarchyNode():

    def __init__(self, nodeId):
        self.nodeId = nodeId
        self.children = {} # opted for dictionary to help reduce lookup time

    def addOrGetChild(self, childNode):
        return self.children.setdefault(childNode.nodeId,childNode)


    def find_matching_node(self, node):
        '''
        look for the node in the immediate children of the current node.
        if not found recursively look for it in the children nodes until 
        gone through all nodes
        '''
        matching_node = self.children.get(node.nodeId)
        if matching_node:
            return matching_node
        else:
            for child in self.children.itervalues():
                matching_node = child.find_matching_node(node)
                if matching_node:
                    return matching_node
            return None