I have no idea when I first heard the sentence, “I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

Probably childhood.

It feels like one of those phrases that just existed in the air when a lot of us were growing up. Right alongside “Because I said so,” “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” and the ever-popular parenting classic, “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?”

Which, side note, always seemed like a very dramatic escalation. The answer is no by the way. But anyway.

“I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

Most of us know exactly what that sentence means.

Conversation over.

Whatever comes out of your mouth next is probably only going to make things worse.

So shut up.

Take the punishment.

Say you’re sorry.

And, ideally, never do whatever the hell you just did again.

The problem is that I’m not sure that actually teaches accountability.

Sometimes I think it teaches us how to end the conversation.

And those are not necessarily the same thing.

Kids Are Not Known for Their Legal Arguments

To be fair to parents everywhere, children can offer some absolutely ridiculous explanations.

A kid can turn a missing homework assignment into a story involving three classmates, a broken printer, an injured squirrel, the school Wi-Fi, and some vague suggestion of international interference.

Sometimes you have listened to fifteen minutes of nonsense and you really do just need this child to put on their damn shoes.

I get it.

I got caught somewhere with someone doing something I shouldn’t have been the summer before my freshman year of high school. My mom confronted me. I’m sure it was nearly as awkward for her as it was for me. The story I created on the spot as a response to her inquiry was brilliant, and somewhat true in my mind at the time. Looking back, there were way too many words in my explanation, too detailed of a response, so much so, that I can cringe at how naive I was to ever think she was going to believe the BS coming out of my mouth. I probably would’ve been better off simply saying, “Yep, that was a terrible idea and I won’t do it again.” In fact, I am confident that if I had said that, I wouldn’t be writing about it today. 

But buried somewhere inside some of those terrible explanations may actually be useful information.

Maybe the kid forgot the homework.

Maybe they could not get themselves started.

Maybe they did it and forgot to turn it in.

Maybe they never really understood the assignment and were too embarrassed to say so.

Maybe they became overwhelmed, avoided it, and then built a bizarre story because admitting “I panicked and did nothing” felt worse.

Or maybe they absolutely knew what they were supposed to do and chose not to do it because playing Atari sounded better.

That is also information.

Those situations do not require the same response.

But if the explanation itself is automatically classified as an excuse, we never get far enough to tell the difference.

We just get the behavior.

And then we try to punish the behavior out of existence.

Sometimes that works.

Sort of.

But Did You Think It?

I told this story in the episode, but I keep coming back to it because it explains so much.

A woman approached me after a conference and told me that when she was young, she once called her mother a bitch.

Her mother slapped her across the face.

She told me she deserved it and that it was effective because she never called her mother a bitch again.

So I asked her:

“But did you think it?”

She looked at me like I had asked the dumbest question on earth.

“Of course.”

Well then.

Maybe we need to be a little more careful about what we call effective.

The behavior stopped.

The thought did not change.

What changed was her understanding of what was safe to say out loud.

And I think we confuse those two things all the time.

Silence can look a whole lot like learning from the outside.

Compliance can look like understanding.

An apology can look like accountability.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes the person just figured out which words make the uncomfortable interaction end faster.

And if that is what we taught them as children, we probably should not be shocked when they become adults who are really good at saying “I’m sorry” and considerably less skilled at explaining what actually happened.

So What Is an Excuse, Anyway?

I have been thinking about this distinction a lot.

A reason explains why something happened.

An excuse tries to use that explanation to eliminate responsibility.

Those two things can start with exactly the same sentence.

“I forgot because I have ADHD.”

Okay.

Now what?

If what follows is:

“So you cannot be mad at me, you knew I had ADHD when you married me, and there is really nothing I can do about this...”

We have probably wandered into excuse territory.

If what follows is:

“I forgot. I know you were counting on me. I need to figure out where that task disappeared because whatever I’m doing right now clearly is not working...”

Now the explanation gave us somewhere to go.

Same diagnosis.

Same forgotten task.

Very different relationship with responsibility.

And here is where people get pissed at each other.

Because the person giving the explanation may genuinely be trying to explain.

The person hearing it may genuinely be exhausted from hearing explanations.

Both can be telling the truth.

Over the weekend, I prepped breakfast egg cups. I worked so hard all morning prepping and chopping and was ready to go. I was also doing laundry in the basement so setting the timer on the oven wasn’t going to be an effective strategy so I didn’t, and thought I would set my alarm on my phone when I got back downstairs, where said phone was. About 40 minutes later, I smell something and actually thought “Oh, I wonder what Ed is cooking.” Those damn eggs did not cross my mind again. Not even when I smelled something. Ed did come down a few minutes later and told me he smelled the eggs, took them out of the oven, and that they were “a little brown and crispy” on top, but if you just cut that part away, they were still fine. This is not how I want to live my life. Why would I have spent all that time and energy if I didn’t really care about how the eggs turned out. So I cared immensely, but there was no amount of caring that was enough that would make my memory not do what it does, or potentially burn my house down. 

This is one of the things ADHD makes especially complicated.

Sometimes you care an absolutely ridiculous amount.

You think about the thing.

You fully intend to do the thing.

You may worry about doing the thing.

And then somehow the thing still does not get done.

Which is maddening when you are the one living inside that brain.

It is also maddening for the person who needed the thing done.

We need room for both.

Sometimes “Why?” Is Not an Argument

This is another one I have been chewing on.

How many of us were taught that asking “why” was disrespectful?

Why do I have to do it that way?

Why does this need to be done now?

Why can’t I do this first?

What exactly do you mean by clean the kitchen?

To some adults, those questions sound argumentative before the kid has even finished asking them.

And yes, sometimes kids are absolutely trying to wear you down.

Adults do this too, by the way.

We are not nearly as sophisticated as we like to think we are.

But sometimes the person is actually trying to collect enough information to successfully do what you asked.

This comes up constantly with ADHD.

“When do you need it?”

“Soon.”

No.

Absolutely not.

“Soon” is how two people end up furious on Thursday because one person thought it meant Tuesday and the other thought it meant sometime before the end of civilization.

I learned a long time ago to ask for the by when.

What is the actual last acceptable moment this needs to be completed?

Because now I have something.

I can do it early.

I can panic and do it at the last possible second.

Both are apparently options my brain enjoys.

But at least I know where the cliff is.

My most challenging issue when things are requested of me is when I’m told, “Just get it to me whenever. I’m not in a rush.” I am aware we are using very different definitions of “whenever” and “rush.” Because if you don’t tell me something concrete, forget about it.

The question itself is not always resistance.

Sometimes it is scaffolding.

The Conversation We Hear May Not Be the Conversation Happening

This is where things get messy.

Your partner says:

“You didn’t pay the bill.”

That is one sentence.

But if you have spent your entire life being called lazy, careless, irresponsible, selfish, forgetful, flaky, or some variation of “You would do better if you actually cared,” you may hear something completely different.

“You are a disappointment.”

“You never follow through.”

“I cannot count on you.”

“Here we go again.”

“You are failing at being an adult.”

Maybe none of that was actually said.

Your nervous system filled in the rest.

And suddenly you are defending your entire character in a conversation about Verizon.

This is why I keep teaching that sometimes it is not attitude.

It is activation.

The defensiveness may have a history.

That does not make everything you say while defensive acceptable.

It does mean that if we want to change what happens next, knowing what got activated might be useful.

Because once both people start trying to prove they are not the bad guy, the original problem disappears.

One person is trying to prove:

“I should be able to rely on you.”

The other is trying to prove:

“I am trying harder than you understand.”

Meanwhile, Verizon still wants their money.

Nobody has won.

Rage Is Clean

One of the things I said while recording this episode that has stuck with me is:

Rage is clean.

Curiosity is messy.

Anger gives us a villain.

You did this because you are selfish.

You forgot because you do not care.

You are late because my time does not matter to you.

You interrupted because you think what you have to say is more important.

Done.

Case closed.

Now I know who the problem is.

Curiosity is considerably more annoying.

Curiosity asks:

What actually happened?

Where did this break down?

What part of this belongs to you?

What part belongs to me?

What did you think was happening?

What support would actually change something?

Is this a skill problem?

An attention problem?

An agreement problem?

A capacity problem?

A relationship problem?

Or did you know exactly what you were doing and make a shitty choice?

Because that happens too.

Curiosity does not mean everybody gets acquitted.

Sometimes curiosity leads directly to:

“Oh. You understood perfectly. You just decided you didn’t give a shit.”

Well.

Now at least we know what problem we are solving.

I Think Some of Us Learned Submission Instead of Accountability

This might be the part that interests me most.

If every explanation was called an excuse when we were children, what did we learn?

Maybe we learned to stop explaining.

Maybe we learned that admitting confusion made adults angrier.

Maybe we learned to hide mistakes until there was no possible way to hide them anymore.

Maybe we learned to overexplain every decision because we were terrified somebody would misunderstand our intentions.

Maybe we learned to apologize before we even knew what we were apologizing for.

Maybe we became exceptionally good at reading authority.

What answer does this person want from me?

How do I get out of this room?

What do I need to say so this conversation ends?

That is not necessarily accountability.

That may just be survival inside a power dynamic.

I became a sneaky little shit when I was in high school. I wasn’t necessarily doing anything delinquent, but I would engage in activities outside the purview of what my parents considered acceptable behavior. I learned if there wasn’t solid evidence, deny, deny, deny. But it bit me in the ass when I was blamed for something I didn’t actually do. I was a sophomore in high school and my basketball team was going to state and I was dressing for varsity. I was part of the bench that didn’t take off our warm ups, and we were just “happy to be there.” But the night before our game, my two roommates snuck in some male high school wrestlers,  also there for a tournament, after I fell asleep. I woke up to a teenage boy in my face with my photo button on his shirt. I panicked. Before I panicked, I was terrified. Nothing like waking up in a strange hotel room to a stranger in your face wearing, well, your face. 

Ultimately, I, along with my hotel roommates, were sent home. I told the freaking truth, and I wasn’t believed.That moment when I was told I wasn’t believed carved a scar on my heart that I don’t think ever completely healed. Because what I heard was “we know you’re bad, so we don’t believe you.” I quit the basketball team the summer before my senior year and this incident played a huge part in why I stopped caring, and why I stopped enjoying it. 

And then we grow up.

We bring that into marriages.

Parenting.

Friendships.

The firehouse.

The police department.

The office.

Therapy.

Someone asks us why something happened, and before they finish the question we are already preparing the defense.

Or we completely shut down because explaining ourselves has never felt particularly useful.

Then somebody says:

“Why are you being so defensive?”

Well.

Pull up a chair.

This may take a minute.

Maybe We Need a Better Sentence

I am not suggesting that every explanation deserves unlimited airtime.

Sometimes the excuse is absolutely an excuse.

Sometimes somebody has explained the same behavior twelve times while doing exactly nothing differently.

Sometimes you have heard enough.

Boundaries still exist.

Consequences still exist.

Other people are allowed to be tired.

But maybe we can replace:

“I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

with something that leaves the door open just enough to get useful information.

“I want to understand why this happened, and we still need to deal with what it affected.”

Or:

“That explains what made this difficult. It does not make what happened okay.”

Or:

“I hear what everybody else did. Tell me your part.”

Or, if you are talking to yourself:

“What made this harder, and what can I actually do with that information?”

That last one may be the most important.

Because calling yourself lazy for the thousandth time has apparently not fixed the problem.

Maybe it is time to collect better information.

Maybe your explanation contains something useful.

Maybe somebody else’s does too.

We do not have to confuse understanding with permission.

We do not have to confuse compassion with removing responsibility.

We can hear the excuse long enough to find out whether there is a reason buried inside it.

Then we can ask the question that actually matters: What are we going to do with what we just learned?

Because that is where accountability starts becoming useful.