Her Story
About Maureen
Maureen E. Palmer, MS, OT, CIMT is a master’s-prepared Occupational Therapist with over five decades of clinical and educational experience. Based in Livonia, Michigan, she is the founder and owner of Focus Point Therapy, LLC, where she has worked extensively with children and adults across hospital, clinic, home, and school settings. Her early career began in acute care hospital environments, specializing in neurology, oncology, orthopedics, burns, and physical rehabilitation, before expanding into private practice and pediatric occupational therapy in 2001.
Throughout her career, she has developed expertise in sensory integration, neurodevelopmental therapy, pain management, and brain-based rehabilitation. She is certified in multiple advanced modalities, including Interactive Metronome therapy (CIMT), Sensory Integration and Praxis testing, Craniosacral Therapy for Pediatrics, Integrated Listening Systems (iLs), and Aging in Place consulting. She is also known for developing practical clinical tools such as the 5-Minute Palmer Functional Brain Dominance Test and the Palmer Pain Scale (0–10), designed to help better understand cognitive and sensory processing patterns in learning and recovery.
In addition to her clinical work, Maureen is an author, educator, and speaker focused on learning differences and neurodiversity. She created the “Wired to Learn” framework, which identifies 44 learning styles and supports educators, homeschool parents, and therapists in tailoring instruction to individual needs. She has authored multiple books, led educational masterclasses, and hosted a global talk radio show, all centered on her mission to help individuals move from frustration and misunderstanding to confidence, clarity, and a love of learning.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Maureen
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my relationship with God and recognizing that we are His vessels. When we open up to what God wants in our life and the call He has on our life, we're all headed in the same direction. The difficulties I faced were part of the journey to learn the lessons that make us stronger and stronger people. In our weakness is His strength, and I'm now living that Scripture in a way that means so much more to me than it ever did before. My personal experience of struggling until age 46, thinking I was stupid, and then discovering I could read - that breakthrough was God working through me. I feel the richness of life the older I get, and I now see that God selected me, like He selected a practically stuttering orator to deliver His message. I'm the last person on earth who should be an author, and yet here I am, because God is so funny that way. Every morning before I go into my prayer time, I ask Jesus what flavor coffee He likes today - connecting in such a human, loving way. My relationship with Him has put things in perspective and given me insight into children so that we don't waste their time.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge I see is that we're still relying on research from 20 years ago and haven't gotten much further because people aren't believing there's more to discover about learning styles. The current system is broken - it takes two and a half years to test kids and get all the neuro testing, psych testing, physical therapy, and occupational therapy evaluations done, and then they get a label. Why are children losing two and a half years of learning because we're taking so long in a broken system to identify differences at the root? We're calling these differences dysfunction or disability, but if we could identify learning styles early in life through something like my 5-Minute Palmer Functional Brain Dominance Test, it would be enriching a child's love of learning instead. The opportunity is that if a teacher did this test the first week of school, they would know who their auditory learners are, who their visual learners are, who has to walk around and move to learn. We're also facing AI these days, and what we can't lose is recognizing who we are as humans - AI does not have a soul. We need to keep recognizing who God created us to be in His image and likeness as creators. The research literature doesn't have a lot of studies that talk about learning styles, and the ones that do haven't come to any conclusion about whether knowing a child's learning style and teaching to it has more benefit than one-size-fits-all teaching.
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