Gymbaroo - Ryde, Australia

GymbaROO founder Margaret Sasse believed that she would have been burnt at the stake if she had lived a few centuries earlier, such was the horror with which her ideas on early childhood were greeted over thirty years ago. Fortunately, Margaret paid little heed to the ‘knockers’ and as a result, many thousands of children and their families have benefited from her insight and sheer determination to have her approach of aiding child development by focusing on neurology, accepted and adopted.

The GymbaROO story starts with ‘Marg’ as she was affectionately known, a farmer’s wife, the mother of five and an ex-nurse, who took up remedial English teaching at the local country Technical School (Wonthaggi Tech) in the late 1950’s to support the farm income. Observing that many of  

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her poor readers seemed quite clever except for their ‘reading’, and disillusioned with the poor progress she was having with the standard remedial reading offerings of the time, she sought alternatives.

Marg came in contact with professionals overseas who were using new and innovative neurological programs to assist children with learning difficulties and developmental delays. She applied these techniques which, instead of trying to teach these teenagers to read, involved activities such as flip flops on the floor (now known as ‘crocodiles’ at GymbaROO), swinging from the monkey bars and crawling – and for homework, more of the same!

The implementation of this program resulted in the learning support programs for these teenagers being much more effective! It was a ‘light bulb’ moment for Marg. She tried to share the outcomes with the Education Department of the time, however found no one would listen to her, (what would a farmer’s wife, ex-nurse know!?)

Not willing to give up, she continued her research and developed specialist knowledge in the neuro-physiological development of children as it related to reading skills. The family moved to Melbourne, and in 1972 Marg founded ANSUA (A New Start for Under Achievers). This was a non-profit organisation that provided sensorimotor programs for children with learning difficulties.

The positive outcomes of the work provided by the ANSUA program to school-aged children were clear, however Marg wasn’t satisfied. It was obvious to her that signs of future learning difficulties were evident from a very young age, many years before a child entered school. Her question was,

“Why do we wait for children to fail at school? Let’s prevent this from happening in the first place!”

She announced that she wanted to run programs for babies, toddlers and pre-school children, to help prevent the burgeoning problem of learning difficulties and not just ‘patch children up’ after they went to school and failed.

Much more research led to the creation of an early childhood neuro-physiological development rationale based on the premise that; development was sequential and dependent on a child’s experiences, and that early patterns of movement provided the foundational neuronal pathways in the brain that enable higher-order thinking to occur.

This rationale led to the development of a specific movement based program that; provided fun developmental activities for babies and children from birth to five years, aimed to educate parents, and offered all children the foundations necessary to assist in future learning.

Again Marg tried to share her findings and her program with the Education Department and other educational institutions, however found that still no one would listen. She was even informed by one group of ‘educational experts’ that what she was doing was tantamount to ‘witchcraft’ and was told by another leading health professional that she was ‘a danger to children’. Marg refused to lie down and roll over. She knew what she was doing was having a dramatic effect on the learning ability of children. In true Marg fashion announced…

“I’m right and they’re wrong and if no one else is going to listen, I’ll jolly well do it myself!”

… so in 1982, in a local church hall with equipment made by Marg’s husband Harry, GymbaROO was born.

And thank goodness Marg didn’t give up, because she was right all along. Today, over thirty years down the track, the supporting documentation is vast and undeniable. Mounting empirical evidence now supports the underlying concepts upon which GymbaROO was founded. Neuro-scientific studies confirm that movement experiences in the first five years of life form the bedrock of a child’s ability – be it academic, emotional, social or physical.

The GymbaROO program now comes highly recommended by a rapidly increasing number of professionals; paediatricians, doctors and early childhood specialists. We are still waiting for Governments to catch up.

From humble beginnings, GymbaROO is today indisputably Australia’s most popular and successful parent-child education program, providing quality neuro-developmental programs to hundreds of thousands of babies, children and parents throughout Australia and worldwide.