Authors

Dr Jane is one of Australia’s leading child and baby development experts.

She has been working with infants, children and parents for over 40 years and loves her job!

Dr Jane has guided the Research and Education of GymbaROO-KindyROO for over 20 years and has played a key role in the production and content of the hugely successful series of baby programs for new parents: Active Babies Smart Kids  activebabiessmartkids.com.au

Dr Jane is a Neuro-Developmental Consultant specialising in the first years of life. She has lectured extensively and appeared on media worldwide, including Major TV Networks/Chat Shows/News in Europe and Asia.

Dr Jane is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at James Cook University College of Healthcare Sciences where she taught in the School of Nursing and completed her PhD studies.

Her past research (PhD) focussed on the important role that parents play in the detection of early, but subtle, developmental problems that may give rise to later learning problems at school.

More recently she monitored the results of a school-based, daily, sensory-motor movement program. The results were exciting – children loved the program and both physical and academic skills improved significantly.

Dr Jane believes that parents and grandparents are THE most important influence on their children’s lives. As a result, she is committed totally to helping parents and grandparents help their children be the best they can be through natural, fun activities and games.

More recently Dr Jane has become a grandmother and is now a grandparent to 5 grandchildren under 6 years (4 boys and 1 girl). Like many grandparents, she helps take care of her grandchildren when she can and, as a grandparent, she realised that there were many other grandparents who would like to know more about how they can best help their grandchildren in those early years.  Her co-authored book Grandparenting Grandchildren is a ‘one stop shop’ for grandparents who want to know a little bit more, about a lot – including why movement plays a key role in the development of the brain and body; how behaviour and emotional regulation develops; why sleep matters; why communication is best if it’s not via a screen (while also acknowledging that screen-based chats between children and grandparents are better than no chats at all!); the importance of music and dance to learning; how to stimulate imagination and curiosity, and the ever-in-demand ideas for developmentally outstanding gifts.

Tessa Grigg

Tessa wanted to teach from the first day she arrived in Mrs Nell’s classroom, aged five.

This passion never waned, and she went on to earn her teaching qualifications. While she only taught in a traditional school for a year after graduating, her life has been filled with teaching in a variety of settings outside the classroom.

Tessa has a wide range of experience within the Early Childhood Education field. She has supervised a pre-school with specialist work in the sensory motor area and she has worked as a child and family therapist in a hospital working with families on their challenges relating to family life.

She has taught adult students in the area of teaching and child development over the years, and has owned and operated a GymbaROO centre for nine years.

Tessa is the “Tessa” in Tessarose Productions, a business that has produced music for children for over 30 years and has recorded over 700 songs.

Currently Tessa is a certified Rhythmic Movement Training Practitioner and runs a kinesiology clinic for children and adults. She is also working part-time as a child development lecturer at the University of Canterbury and is the Research and Education Manager for GymbaROO-KindyROO in Australia.

Tessa completed a PhD focused on children’s primitive reflexes, an interest that was sparked by Dr Jane Williams at a GymbaROO conference in 1996. Primitive reflexes that do not follow the typical progression of being used as the child goes down the birth canal, aiding with initial survival and then integrating, can cause challenges for children as they develop. Tessa has always looked for the cause of a developmental challenge and then addressing it, rather than looking at the symptoms and putting on a band-aid.

Each week, to keep her in-touch with the real world, Tessa teaches four music classes with children aged six months to five years. She believes that being in close contact with children, enables her to continue to develop as a teacher of teachers.

When Jane asked if Tessa would like to co-author a book on the importance of grandparents in a child’s development, it seemed a very important place to put some accurate and current information. Although Tessa is not a grandparent, she has many friends who are grandparents, and she was always being asked questions about what they should do. Sometimes the questions are big philosophical ones, ‘What is the best way to manage a tantrum?’, and sometimes it was as simple as ‘What is the best type of pram?” It was also interesting how little they knew about child development, even though they had very successfully raised their own children. When she learned that they were really interested in learning more about what is good for their grandchildren, Tessa knew that the project, Grandparenting Grandchildren, was going to fill an important gap in a generation’s knowledge of how to raise healthy, well-adjusted children.