I'm so silly

I don’t think, canonically, they mean for Liko’s family to read as dysfunctional (or, at least, as concerningly dysfunctional instead of lighthearted dysfunctional).

I think the writers probably meant for her parents to just be “busy”, and them all to love one another and whatever.

Instead, we end up with Liko seeming distant from her father and showing no interest in seeing him or staying home, and so much worse than that, her mom, after specially contacting the RVTs to keep Liko safe, refusing to go home to see her.

There are many more canon instants you can pull upon for Liko’s parents being neglectful, such as IMO the flashback clip from the second theme song, in which we see young Liko seemingly sad to be ignored by her parents at a market (I mean the colors wash out as she freezes staring at their backs. At this point Lucca is refusing to look at/meet eyes with Liko exactly like how later Cervantis refuses to with Amethio). But let’s talk, for a second, about what Liko’s mom, Lucca’s childhood, might have been like.

So, Diana. I love her to bits and pieces, and she doesn’t have a phone and Liko thought it was more likely Amethio was a creeping guy trying to abduct her than that her grandma would write her a letter.

It’s an ongoing gag that Diana is impossible to contact, and Diana is also known for never staying in one place, always being out and adventuring.

Lucca is…. Strangely normal compared to her entire family. Like she’s Just A Regular Mom in character design, occupation, and personality. She’s like the one neurotypical in a line of autistics lol.

It’s not that Lucca couldn’t have liked adventure, or been a Trainer herself, but we see no proof of that (Heck, since she’s not in episode 9, Fidough really comes off as Alex’s Pokemon instead of hers, so I don’t tend to assume Lucca has any Pokemon).

If she has no particular interest in adventure, well, it would have been easy for her childhood and early-adult life to have been spent with blocks of time where her mom simply… Wasn’t home.

Diana could’ve been out adventuring and honestly, Diana, being so free-spirited and well, confident, could easily have assumed Lucca was ready to care for herself/be left home alone much earlier than she should have been.

But, well, what would be Diana’s reference for how much attention a child needs is, anyways? Let’s look at her mother, Layla.

Layla is Rystal’s child (Given Lucius was out of the picture by the point she was born). And Rystal died young, though we don’t know how young.

It’s entirely possible that Layla had to fend for herself from a very, very young age, because she was orphaned.

And, well, even if she wasn’t… What sort of headspace was Rystal in? Because it couldn’t be a good one for raising a child.

She just lost everyone she loves, human and Pokemon alike, and was left with, well, nothing. She surely sparsely had energy to give Layla attention, especially when, well, she was a traveler. It’s possible she didn’t even have a home of her own to return to, and we have no backstory on Rystal’s own home-life and if she had family to fall back on.

The true moral here is, I think Rystal, through circumstances entirely out of her control, accidentally started a chain of normalized neglect through Liko’s lineage. I don’t think it was intentional, and I think all these people love their children (Though Lucca is on thin ice because of the way I happen to analyze her), they just don’t realize this problem that started a 100-or-so years ago.