Such a common phenomenon.

It's one of those situations where you can't exactly blame either side. The child rightly asks to see love in a tangible way and to hear the words too. The adult apparently doesn't have as much in the internal "storerooms" because they too hadn't received it to the extent they needed during their childhood, or, for their own reasons, because of their own unsolved issues of the past, they had difficulty articulating "I love you".

It is a very moving poem, Thomas.