6yo unresponsive to verbal affection

Hello -
I am a divorced parent. My almost-6-year-old daughter doesn't live with me. Until the past year, I had frequent visitation with her almost daily, until her mom moved away. Visitation is now about 2.5 months a year, total, spread out.

I have always showered my daughter with verbal and physical affection -- always holding her hand, carrying her frequently, kissing and hugging her often, lots of cuddling. Verbal affection too -- when she's with me, I tell her "I love you!" more times than I could count.

I have telephone contact with her, every other day, when she's not with me. And I frequently tell her how much I miss her, love her, and can't wait to see her.

The problem is that what I thought was just an immaturity of cognitive development preventing her from reciprocating this affection is now appearing to be permanent. I have tried to gently explain to her how nice it is to reciprocate when someone expresses love. On occasion, she'll reciprocate with an "I love you, too" - but more often than not, it's because she "remembered" that she's supposed to, and not because she feels it as a genuine automatic response.

More troublesome is our phone calls. We usually chit chat for a few minutes about her day and mine, until that part bores her, and she wants to make up a story (something we do, and which she enjoys). We can make up stories indefinitely, and she never gets sick of them. But when it's time to end the conversation, I'll tell her my usual parting, "Ok, honey, have a good night's sleep, and I miss you so much and love you so much too." And her response is a curt, "Ok, bye." And I have to repeat "I love you ", until she says "Iloveyoutoobye" (it sounds like one word when she says it).

My question is this -- does this sound normal? Is this expected for a child her age? I should mention that her mother and I have an awful relationship, filled with friction and acrimony, and from what I've heard from my daughter, her mom has said bad things about me, and there appears to be quite a bit of instability on her end. Basically, there exist all the ingredients for my daughter to be living in an environment that would precipitate dysfunction. So you can imagine that I have a healthy bit of concern wondering -- is this just her being a 5-year-old? Or is this an indication of parental alienation syndrome, or some variant of that?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[jdtm]

It sounds normal to me.