This is just me rambling and trying to figure out that post-Auron landing in dream Zanarkand and pre-"well your dad says it's time for a road trip let's go Tidus" stretch of time and general childhood ramblings.
Auron apparently went there just to look after him. He didn't plan on taking Tidus to Spira until Sin popped up. He says in Luca he watched over Tidus until he could bring him to Spira, but then in-between either one of the Sin fight phases or after you enter Sin (can't remember exactly, but you can get it somewhere in the endgame) that he decided when Sin showed up during the game to bring Tidus to Spira. I want to lean more towards the second explanation being the more correct one (mainly because what reason would Auron have to lie to Tidus at that point) but who knows. Maybe this is just the writing being inconsistent or a translation issue.
I see sometimes in fic Auron arrive after Tidus's mom dies but he's in the flashback scene before she dies because Auron's the one asking if she's alright. It also makes sense if it's him because he says he wouldn't know what to do if she died, presumably because then taking care of Tidus would be entirely on him. That means there was some awkward stretch of time where it was, presumably, the three of them together in the houseboat. How much doesn't seem to be that clear, though.
If you want pain: it's possible Auron told Tidus's mom an abridged and redacted version of what happened to Jecht. And knowing for sure he was dead made her finally give out completely. So Auron can blame himself both for not fighting harder and preventing Jecht's death and for unintentionally taking Tidus's mom away! Yay!
... But maybe Tidus's mom was more willing to let go of life and reunite with Jecht in the afterlife (even if he wasn't actually dead) because Auron was there to look after him.
I... presume he told Tidus at least he was a friend of Jecht's. But the way Tidus asks Auron about the Braska pilgrimage ("You knew my old man, didn't you?" then "And you also knew Yuna's father?") could be read as him either reiterating something he does know with new information, or him finding out about this after coming to Spira. But then again he doesn't sound super shocked (as in "You knew my old man?!" shocked) when Auron gives him a sword from Jecht at the beginning so. Shrug.
This may purely be an ENG dub-based observation, but a lot of child Tidus's lines have him sound somewhere between bratty and awfully sullen for a 7 year old. He's not exactly mature the whole way through, but some of his lines in the flashback of him asking Jecht to stop drinking have him sounding more like the adult in comparison to Jecht. "I can quit whenever I want!" is a pretty common thing in fiction (and real-life probably) with in-denial alcoholics, but it sounds more childish when that's your comeback to your at maximum 7 year old son.
Admittedly, he's repeating what other people are saying about Jecht's drinking, but that's at first. And the plea for him to stop drinking is entirely Tidus.
But then he's pretty cheery when he grows up so, whether this is a case of puberty doing wonders, an indictment of Jecht and his wife's parenting, or Auron's ??? doing wonders is your call to make.
I don't think it'd be on the same level as, like, Squall, but I wonder if Tidus has some mild abandonment issues. Or maybe loneliness issues would be more accurate. I mean, from his view, his dad just up and vanished one day, and even before that you could say Jecht was already emotionally absent because of the drinking. His mom, intentionally or not, prioritized Jecht over him, so she wasn't really emotionally there all the time either, and then when Jecht went, so did his mom. Maybe that's why, even if Auron's distant, he's fond of him is because at the end of the day he technically stuck around longer than Tidus's own parents did.
How much raising did Auron do exactly? He certainly took care of Tidus in the sense of keeping him alive and watching over him, but how much like... rearing did he do? I think duty would keep him from bouncing on a small child and watching from a safe distance, so he probably was more hands-on when Tidus was still young but as he got older did he start bouncing? By the time Tidus is in the Abes Auron's apparently gone to just checking in now and then. I don't think his more hardass "move move we got a pilgrimage to do" behavior is going to be super reflective of his time with Tidus as a kid since that's Auron with a hard, time-sensitive goal, but I do think his turning a bit more gentle at points (like when Tidus is clearly upset about possibly never going back to his Zanarkand) shows he probably tried to be there emotionally to some degree. But he was still coming off the nightmare show that was the end of Braska's pilgrimage, and it'd probably be hard to be there fully when you're keeping a good amount of secrets.
But more importantly did Tidus have to teach him how household appliances worked? I imagine some wouldn't be that hard for Auron to wrap his head around, but like. Did Tidus have to show him how a rice cooker worked? Did Tidus walk him step-by-step through operating a toaster?
You know that stereotype about parents who just want a baby and not a kid? I imagine Jecht's the opposite. Thought Tidus's baby stage was the worst and he just couldn't wait until he got older and got to the good stages. Infants can't play blitzball after all!
And then baby!Tidus does some cute baby thing, like grabbing Jecht's finger, and Jecht has a revelation from the cosmos. "I get it now." And then he turns around and kind of fucks up the little kid stage but ehhh, what can you do?
I imagine Auron probably never broached the Jecht topic because he'd probably learn pretty quickly that he and Tidus have diametrically opposed views of Jecht, and Auron can't exactly tell Tidus how Jecht changed, and that Jecht did love him, without having to address the giant Sin-shaped elephant swimming around in the ocean. Maybe that's why he took the group to the side to find the one mandatory Jecht sphere, because then Tidus could hear it straight from the horse's mouth. A somewhat emotionally stunted version admittedly, but the horse tried very hard.
... Which makes it kind of sad I guess, because if Jecht could have returned to dream Zanarkand, he probably would have tried to be a better father. But he didn't, and Auron can't exactly "source: dude trust me" Jecht back into Tidus's good graces.
There is a part of me that wants to say Jecht was more loving when Tidus was a baby, but when he got older that's when the mocking came out because he shifted gears into trying to push and prod Tidus into being a great blitz player. Which leads me to the very angsty thought that Tidus has almost no "good" memories (i.e. ones where Jecht acted like a dad and not like he did) of Jecht aside from that time he told his wife to go give Tidus attention. But that may just be the melodrama in me talking.
I think I lean towards "Tidus isn't a natural blond" and specifically towards the "he dyes his hair" camp. I feel that way because Tidus does show roots, and while I'm not going to say this is true for every Nomura-designed character, and it's a little hard to compare because I can't think of many with hair styles close to Tidus's but when compared to other blondes Nomura's designed (Quistis, Cloud, hell Rikku) they don't have the darker roots Tidus has. Besides, if you mentally give Tidus the darker hair he had has a kid he arguably starts to resemble Jecht more. But fictional hair genetics are always weird so ehhhhhhh.
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