Two-year-old boy with autism can’t find ‘Bear,’ his safety toy
Posted October 10, 2016 2:26 pm.
Last Updated October 10, 2016 7:47 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Two-year-old Lucas can’t find his best friend that has been by his side ever since he was born.
His best friend is covered in brown fur, has a two small brown eyes and is filled with stuffing. Lucas has autism and ‘Bear’ is his safety toy.
“He goes everywhere with Lucas, he even went to Brazil and then back to Canada,” said his mother Jessica Hoffart. “Bear is with him twenty-four seven, it is really part of Lucas.”
On Saturday, the family went to a park near Britannia Road West and Creditview Road in Mississauga around 2 p.m. and that was the last time they saw Bear.
“I created the habit of always looking in the stroller for the teddy bear,” Hoffart said. But when she went to check for Bear she couldn’t find him anywhere.
“I looked in the trash bins, on the road,” she described. “”I still didn’t find it.”
The brown-coloured leaves that had fallen on the ground made it especially difficult to search for Bear blending in with with the brown colour of his fur.
Hoffart said that Lucas needs Bear to fall asleep and when he has “meltdowns,” as she described them, he always reached for him.
“With the meltdowns that is what he goes to, he goes to the teddy bear to calm him down,” she said. “He’s doing OK, the main problem is when he actually tries to go to sleep.”
Lucas saw the images of Bear when Hoffart was creating the Twitter account and started trying to find his best friend while saying “bear, bear, bear?”
“I look at him and see part of Lucas missing,” Hoffart said.
They even tried to find a replacement but the store Bear was first purchased from doesn’t make the same toy any more, and no other toy stores she has gone to make the same type of bear either.
“I have tried to find another one at Toys “R” Us and the other toy stores, but they don’t have that bear any more,” Hoffart explained.
Hoffart hopes that someone will locate Bear and bring him home.
“I just want to see him happy to see the bear again,” she said.
If you find Bear you can contact us here.
