Prevent parent template re-create / re-render

I have a nested set of sortable <ol>, generated using a recursive template.

When dragging and dropping any <li> anywhere in the tree below the top level <ol>, the template(s) are not re-created or re-rendered, which is the desired behavior. But, when moving <li> within top level <ol> itself, its parent template is re-created and re-rendered, and this is not desireable.

I thought it was due to the data-context of the parent template being reactive, but tested with removing the data-context completely from parent-template, and no dice, still re-creates. I’ve tried using {reactive: false} in a db call too, but still the parent-template re-creates.

The structure of templates looks like this:

parent-template
    > top-level-ol: any movement here causes the parent-template to re-create/re-render
        > recursive template (calls itself): any movement here does not cause any re-create/re-render

Beyond recursively creating the <ol> manually, I’m not sure how to force no re-creation of the parent-template. Any ideas?

would using rubaxa:sortable be helpful?