Being non-verbal when you first wake up

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In a thread I made a while back about sleep drunkenness, Raleigh mentioned that he was nonverbal for a while after waking up. I thought that it was interesting but I didn't think much of it until I realized that it happens to me too.

I can be very hard to communicate with in the morning, just ask any of my family members. Each day before school my brother wakes me up less then 5 minutes before I have to actually get up. If he says my name then I respond with "yeah?" Or "huh?", I can answer yes or no questions, I can repeat memorized phrases, and I can make various sounds but I can't properly process language. I didn't think anything of it until today when my brother said "why is it that you respond when I call your name but not to anything else?" and that got me thinking about why that is, which lead me to noticing that my ability to process language was pretty much nonexistent. Of course I couldn't say anything about it at the time.

I did some research on the topic but the only thing I found was a Reddit thread asking about what prevents non-verbal autistic people from talking where an autistic person replied about how they are non-verbal in the morning right after waking up.

Can anyone else relate? How common is this among autistic people?

I think I can relate to this a bit! In the morning I need some quiet time to myself and a good cup of coffee before I can begin interacting with others. I don't like bumping into a housemate in the kitchen on the way to get my morning cuppa as if they initiate a conversation with me I end up tripping over my words loads and looking even more socially odd than usual. I think it could just be taking forever to wake up though in my case.

I reckon that's no autistic trait since I know lots of people who can't/don't like to talk when waking up in the morning. I'm totally okay with communicating in the morning, myself.

I prefer not to because well, I just woke up, I'm slow and so on... but it's not the end of the world if someone talks to me.

If the person insists on a lengthy chat though I'd say like "I'll be back in a bit, love... hold that thought". Conversation resumes normally after I'm back from the bathroom (usually by asking "where did we stop?" because I won't know for sure the exact subject).

Back in my last job, my friend who worked in the same place and used to give me a lift in his car every day, really caught me off-guard when he asked whether I though that working in the same place had "spoiled" our friendship.
I had no idea what he was getting at to begin with, but it turned out that he had noticed that I never spoke to him on the journey into work in the morning, or would just mumble one word responses to his questions. I was leaving the house after doing my ablutions on "auto-pilot", and then the half-hour commute was part of my "system boot up" time.

That's how it feels to me; like a computer initialising before Windows and my Internet connection finally loads - my brain is bootstrapping its BIOS and running its POST tests.

I'm the opposite. If I wake up in the morning and am super-chatty, that's a warning sign that i'm not going in a good direction for the day...usually that i'm nervous as hell about something.

I think it's a human thing, not an autistic thing. I wonder if it has to do with how the brain affects sleep and how long it takes before your body adjusts to being awake. I know it happens to me.

I think i do too, but the interesting part is that: when i wake up i can talk to people on my phone but not at all or barely IRL, it is most usually a "yes" even when i don't get the question. I think it is my default answer.

I'm more verbal in the morning time and as the day goes on I go more and more in michelle.

In honesty, I think pretty much every NT person I know who doesn't describe themself as a 'morning' person (and some who do), describe problems similar to this.

It's where the 'don't talk to me until I've had coffee' memes come from.

I'm not a night person or a morning person, I'm a when I'm awake person. Doesn't matter what time I get up I'm at the same level of tiredness regardless (which is not all tired). So I'm not too sure how relevant that is to speaking or not in the morning.

But it doesn't register in me to speak for the first hour or two I'm awake, it doesn't even occur to me. for some reason singing is fine, I like to listen to music in the shower and I'm fine singing along to that but speaking no chance.

I'm not completely non-verbal in the morning, but I'm irritable and don't like people talking to me.