BABYGYM OVER 20 YEARS

Our founder is Dr. Melodie de Jager, our director is Cozette Laubser, and Melodie and Cozette have been working together as mother and daughter for 18+ years.

Melodie's interest in the young child led her through many schools of thought, in particular the school of education and the school of psychology. Additionally, she spent more than 30 years informally studying the nervous system. Some would call her approach applied neuroscience, which means one takes the latest findings from brain science and develops interventions to help improve human functioning. During her journey, Melodie founded the Mind Moves Institute and has several affiliated programmes under this umbrella.

Melodie has authored more than 12 published books, several of which have been translated into Afrikaans, English, Danish, Hungarian, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Russian and Spanish. Lastly, but in our eyes most impressively, Melodie is the mother of three children and the grandmother of eight grandchildren.

Cozette's career path has taken her through communication science, childbirth education and the role of a birth doula. For Cozette, becoming a mother and experiencing two physiological homebirths and their full hormonal effect, has irrevocably changed her brain and, therefore, who she is and how she functions. Pregnancy, birth and close contact with a baby change you on a cellular, hormonal and brain level, and what is particularly encouraging to learn, is that interaction with a baby is just as beneficial to the new parents as it is to the baby. Cozette wrote about this in her book, Newborn Brain Essentials, that was published in 2024.

Since the establishment of BabyGym in 2003, more than 30,000 babies and their parents have experienced BabyGym. Some parents are illiterate and do not speak the same language as the BabyGym Instructor, yet they can still benefit by following the demonstrations. Other parents are highly qualified professionals and find the explanations behind the teachings insightful. We are grateful that our parent testimonials include words such as “an overall impactful experience” and “highly recommended!”.

The BabyGym Training Studio is located in leafy Linden, Johannesburg and supports our 40+ qualified and licensed BabyGym Instructors who work across South Africa and Namibia.