It’s a problem even for those of us who are neurotypical (my son is not which is why I follow this community also, so as he gets older I can understand better).

But as someone said, bosses especially will say this and they really just want you to say it was your fault.

In my mind, the difference is if you are excusing the behavior.

“I’m sorry I’m late, I missed my alarm” is an explanation because I’m not excusing the behavior, just explaining.

“I’m late because my alarm didn’t go off” is an excuse because I’m asking to excuse the behavior.

That said, excuses seem to have this bad reputation as being just a reason for laziness, but they really shouldn’t as they can be valid.

Example, my work requires 2FA to log in, which I get via a text. I use a local carrier and “our vendor who handles texting went down”. In that sense, that was my excuse for being late getting logged in - and it wasn’t laziness.