You're viewing a single thread.
<not autistic person>
The way I use those words:
A reason is a cause for an event or a thought process that caused a decision.
An excuse is one of:
- a true reason why a person did a bad thing
- an explanation (true or false) why the cause of events or decisions was somebody else’s actions, not the speaker’s actions
- an explanation (true or false) pretending to be a reason, that isn’t actually the true cause of the event or decision
If I said, “don’t give me any of your excuses” to somebody, I would be meaning all of:
- something bad happened and I think it’s your fault
- I want you to agree with me that it’s your fault and accept blame
- I think you have a pattern of not seeing (or not admitting) that your actions cause bad things, and that’s happening again now
This is a bunch of very negative stuff to be meaning. It could be whoever said that is an asshole, blind, or unfair. If they treat everybody with negative shit like this that’s likely and there’s just no winning with such a person.
I actually have said stuff like “don’t give me excuses” to my kids. I think I’m not an asshole. When I said it, I thought my kid was flailing about doing dumb shit without thinking. What I meant for my kid was, “I want for you to start thinking about how a chain of events fits together, and I want you to accept you have the ability and the responsibility to see a bad outcome forming, and to take actions to make a better outcome instead.”
“I want for you to start thinking about how a chain of events fits together, and I want you to accept you have the ability and the responsibility to see a bad outcome forming, and to take actions to make a better outcome instead.”
Have you considered just telling them that? You're possibly obfuscating an important lesson for them by using a cultural phrase, and it's not uncommon for kids to learn the wrong lesson out of it.
That’s probably good advice but it’s about 15 years too late for me to use it :)