The most enriching, eye-opening learning experience happened nowhere near my child's school this year.

For 45 years, the Parkway School District in St. Louis has sent its sixth-graders to an outdoor school on YMCA campgrounds a couple hours away by bus. It's a four-day experience; it used to be a week-long program, until budget cuts eliminated a day.

"We talk about connecting with nature," said Ron Ramspott, coordinator for Healthy Youth Programs for the district. "It's really about disconnecting with electronics."

My daughter's class recently took the trek into the wilderness (a very tame wilderness, as all the cabins have air conditioning and electricity) for lessons on water ecology, wildlife and soil quality, along with outdoor activities like horseback riding and hiking.

The most daunting aspect is the absolute ban on any digital devices for the entire duration of the trip.

"We weren't sure we were going to make it," my daughter said.

One of her friends packed grid paper in case she got Minecraft DTs.

Twelve is the perfect age for such an immersive off-the-grid experience. It may be the first time in their conscious lives that they don't have a tech device nearby for four consecutive days. They are part of that first cohort who won't remember a time before ubiquitous handheld screens. They were toddlers when YouTube was born. Google, only four years older than them, has been their constant guide.

Removing them from their hyper-connected, screen-saturated environments offered some of the most significant lessons of the year.

They immediately noticed the loss of instant access to information.

"If you wanted to know how to do something, you had to look it up in the field guide or ask a teacher," my daughter said. "You couldn't just search it."

It's not surprising how often questions strike a sixth-grader. During a class outside, a student wondered what the most common rock in Missouri was. No phone to find an answer. On the bus, a student wanted to solve a Rubik's Cube. She couldn't Google the solution. They couldn't even check the time or set an alarm without resorting to anachronisms like watches and alarm clocks.

In addition to finding new ways to access information and solve problems, they had to manage new ways to communicate.

"We couldn't contact our friends on the other teams (through texting)," my daughter said. If you needed to talk to someone, you had to do it face-to-face. Imagine that.

The hardest part for her was being unable to document the experience through the camera she usually carries 24/7.

"There were lots of things I wasn't able to take pictures of," she said. That was annoying. After all, this is the pics-or-it-didn't-happen generation.

Eventually, the impulse to constantly document lessened, and the moment took on its own value. The camaraderie was vital.

"I coped because I had 12 of my friends with me in a cabin," she said.

The absence of their phones and tablets proved less of a distraction at night, which is when most school children retreat into their digital cocoons.

"I got closer to people I wouldn't have talked to otherwise," she said.

Even if the students didn't think about that overtly, at some level, the experience reinforced the importance of human connection.

But it wasn't just the children who broke away from their tech dependence. As parents, we have become accustomed to the digital tether. Sending your child away without any way to check in on them runs counter to the prevailing parenting norms.

Becky Lopanec's daughter, Julia, also went on the trip. Lopanec said she may have missed her daughter's phone as much Julia did.

"I spent the week sending her random text messages knowing that her phone was off and at home," she said. Lopanec sent a series of texts during the next four days: "How's the bus ride?" "Who's in your cabin?" "Sleep tight." "I'm leaving the light on in your room because it makes me think you are here." "Don't forget to brush your teeth," and so on. She even sent her pictures of the dogs.

"It's how I coped with her first overnight," Lopanec said.

My own phone was a reminder of how terribly I missed my girl. I caught myself rereading our old text conversations while she was gone. They are heavily emoji'ed.

My daughter had a sentimental reunion with her sky blue iPhone upon her return.

She cradled her phone in her hand like a delicate baby bird when she first saw it in her bedroom.

"Wifi," she sighed. "It's so beautiful."

We are not the first group to face a "marriage crisis" in the melting pot of America.

By we, I mean Muslim Americans. By crisis, I mean the challenge faced by any smaller community within a larger one when attempting to find a mate. More specifically, the "crisis" within ethnic communities refers to either a rising rate of intra-marriages across ethnic and religious groups, or an excess of eligible single women with fewer prospects within their own particular group.

For those who self-limit their choices to others of the same religious or ethnic background, the pool of viable candidates shrinks. Orthodox, practicing Muslims have another challenge on top of living in a land of slimmer pickings: Dating, in the American sense of the word, is off-limits. You're not allowed to cavort with the opposite sex until it's time to get married. But how exactly is that supposed to happen for generations of children less comfortable with the idea of arranged marriages than their parents may have been?

Long before there were niche dating websites or location-based hookup apps, there were meddling parents, friends, professional matchmakers and mere acquaintances setting up single people.

Then came the Internet. Jewish singles found JDate. Mormons could visit LDSPlanet. Many sites like ChristianMingle cater to Christians, although it seems like you're just as likely to find plenty of relationship-seeking Christians on generic sites like eHarmony.

Marriage-minded Muslims have their own matchmaking websites, but many American Muslims have found those culturally out-of-touch with their own values. They may seem too conservative, too regressive in gender expectations or too focused on physical appearance. Ghazala Irshad, a social media editor, wrote about this dilemma and new technological solutions on the horizon.

All the "rishta aunties" (yentas of a different faith) are complaining about older, educated, single Muslim women and the shortage of eligible men, she said. Irshad, a 30-year-old writer who has reported from around the world, could fit this crisis demographic in the eyes of these aunties. Most certainly, she does in the eyes of her grandmother.

The shortfall of eligible partners has launched all sorts of creative workarounds. Forget Silicon Valley; nothing spurs innovation like a mother needling her child to just get married already.

Irshad recently published a piece on BuzzFeed about a rise in location-based matchmaking apps for Muslims -- like a tame version of Tinder, with a different endgame in mind: a walk down an aisle, not the walk of shame.

"If you're a single Muslim in North America, you know the thirst is real," she writes.

Irshad describes the efforts of enterprising Muslim millennials offering apps that widen social circles but stay within like-minded communities.

"This evens the playing field. It allows men and women to express interest, so girls don't have to be passive and wait for a guy to come court them," she said. Her own online dating profile describes how she's climbed the highest mountain in Indochina, dodged bullets while reporting on the revolution in Egypt, celebrated Eid with Libyan rebels in Benghazi after Gadhafi was killed and taught English to orphans in Cambodia.

Currently, she's traveling in Jordan and Lebanon, teaching photography to Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugee girls as part of trauma counseling.

This is a woman who says she "hasn't had anything going on" in the dating scene for years. Previously, prospective suitors have described her as "too alpha female, too well-traveled, too ambitious."

Irshad, who is moving from Chicago to Boston, signed up with Bliss Marriage, but the app is so new that there isn't anyone else within a 200-mile radius of her yet. She also joined Ishqr.com, a site and forthcoming app that doesn't share photos until both parties express mutual interest in each other's self-submitted profiles. There are also SalaamSwipe and Crescent apps in the works, both of which will allow the spousal search to go mobile.

Irshad didn't expect her BuzzFeed Community self-published article to spread so far. She's gotten messages from Muslims in Europe who related to the story, and she's been interviewed by BBC World about the subject.

"I wanted to get the word out," Irshad said. She wanted other Muslim Americans who might be interested to sign up. It never hurts to increase the pool of candidates.

It may even prompt her grandma, who collected Irshad's biodata (basically a resume) to pass out to her own old-school network of possible suitors, to rethink her marketing strategy.

Our grandmas and Jenny McCarthy are guilty of the same crime.

They've pushed some bit of parenting advice -- unfounded in science but still a deeply held belief; rooted in intuition and circulated by word-of-mouth.

This is not to malign Granny, nor her intentions. There's wisdom that comes with experience, and it is valuable in its own right.

McCarthy, however, took parenting myth-making to towering, destructive heights when she claimed years ago that a vaccine caused her son's autism. (Any link between autism and vaccines has been widely discredited.)

From the minor and inconsequential to the monumental, there are hundreds of myths about raising children, and we are all likely to buy into at least a few of them.

Professors Stephen Hupp and Jeremy Jewell set out to debunk common parenting lore with the best available science. They are co-authors of the newly published "Great Myths of Child Development," and teach psychology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

"I grew up in Missouri. It's the Show-Me State," Hupp said. "I was raised to be skeptical about claims." He is the father of two children, and was surprised by some of the things he discovered while researching the book. He learned about scientific rarities, such as women who are able to get pregnant again early in their pregnancies. It's very rare, but a woman can carry two babies conceived on different dates.

The 50 myths they deconstruct in their book range from conception to adolescence. I was most interested in the ideas we buy into that feed our own collective guilt or sense of superiority.

For example, there's a widespread belief that attachment parenting creates a stronger bond between a parent and child. The authors evaluated this claim by looking at research that sought to answer three questions: Are there lasting impacts from a mother and child immediately bonding after birth? Are there benefits to breast-feeding beyond two years? Does nightly co-sleeping promote attachment?

In each of these cases, they found no evidence of a lasting benefit from these behaviors.

"It's not like we criticize every aspect (of attachment parenting)," Hupp said. "We just want parents to be cautious. Not everything tied to attachment parenting is a research-supported idea."

They also found that research supports the "cry-it-out" method for sleep-training babies as effective without long-term negative effects. Also under the umbrella of things parents feel guilty about but shouldn't: Children who have spent time in day care do just as well later as children who haven't. Day care does not hurt parent-child attachment, Hupp said.

I fall on the attachment side of the early childhood parenting divide, but I can accept that I may not have chosen that path because of long-term benefits to my child, but rather because of short-term benefits to myself. It felt like I was fighting evolutionary instincts to let a baby cry it out at night, even if I knew intellectually that it would not permanently scar a child to learn how to sleep alone.

This is how it goes with many of the myths we choose to believe. They are repeated often enough. They make intuitive sense. They appeal to our fears, anxieties or offer an explanation for an unknown.

Plus, science evolves. Data are imperfect. Even the experts change their minds over time.

But there is a lot to be learned by challenging conventional wisdom and looking at which scientifically tested ideas can make us better parents. Hupp and Jewell's book offers these evidence-backed tips: Brief time-outs are an effective tool in decreasing challenging behaviors in toddlers. But "scared straight" programs designed to prevent delinquency actually lead to a greater likelihood to commit future crimes.

On the other hand, parents who give children commands with praise are likely to see greater compliance. Rewards used to increase desirable behavior in children actually work. Hupp said parents can use a reward to start a new behavior, then gradually phase out the reward over time. This may be one of those places where science confirms age-old wisdom.

Turns out, bribes work.

Grandma could have told us that.