Take note ahead of time:

It’s not hard for some relationships to fall through the cracks, especially when work gets hectic.

Whether you constantly travel, maintain the standard 9-to-5 or have a seemingly incompatible schedule with every other person, making time for an hourlong catch-up phone call with your best friend, a late dinner or even weekend brunch plans can seem like impossible tasks.

Want to make sure your loved ones still know you care even when work-life balance seems impossible?

The Tribune asked two relationship experts for tips on how to remind someone you care. You don’t have to check in with friends often to know the important things going on in their lives, says therapist Michael McNulty of the Chicago Relationship Center. While mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, scan for something positive you can mention at a later date if you don’t have time for specifics right away. Instead of getting to a much overdue dinner and saying, “So tell me what’s been going on!” you can instead have something to ask about, he said.

“Expressing fondness and admiration, even when you see people less often, tells them that I am taking time to notice what’s going on in their lives and to appreciate them, who they are and what they have accomplished,” he explained. “Try to keep in mind what you’re hearing about people and making sure to compliment or congratulate them if you see them around town or bump into them in your travels.”

Be proactive in small ways:

We’ve all let some texts sit in our inbox unanswered for too long, but McNulty and Shasta Nelson, author of “Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness,” say a text to check in or even dropping a card in the mail is an easy way to communicate thoughtfulness and support — no special occasion necessary.

Rethink “needy” to alleviate negativity: Nelson and McNulty emphasize understanding someone’s emotional needs and doing so without becoming exhausted or “needy” ourselves.

If a friend, family member or partner sends rapid texts or calls multiple times, the person could be looking for something from us that won’t take long unless we prolong it ourselves. This can create annoyance, avoidance or stress for both parties.

“The problem isn’t in having or expressing those needs, as much as it can be in how we go about getting those needs met,” says Nelson.

She suggests asking yourself two questions:

What do I think this person is really needing or hungering for? Can I imagine a scenario in which her needs don’t feel overwhelming or exhausting to me?

Carving out even a small window of time can go a long way.

“As we get more clarity about what she’s asking for and how we could receive it with less negativity, we might be able to better strategize a scenario where both of us feel good,” says Nelson.

Keep the relationship reciprocal:

“We need to take responsibility to make sure that we also feel seen in this friendship, which means offering up details, telling stories and thinking through things where she can help you,” says Nelson.

“When partners or friends can trust that they have each other’s backs, they become much more invested in one another,” said McNulty, adding, “in my personal experiences, when I have that kind of trust in our friend, I can reconnect with him, and it feels just like it did the last time we talked, even if it has been years.”

If both parties give the “gift” of trust, it creates a cycle of helpfulness.

Set healthy expectations:

We can’t always say yes but should always be up to renegotiate, says Nelson.

The healthiest people and friendships are built around this, and she suggests you propose two options to show you care, while also maintaining your own ground: “I really do want to help support you through this. … Would it be helpful if we scheduled an hour every week to talk, so I could plan around it?” Or, “I have time to talk on the phone for 30 minutes right now. What would be the most meaningful/helpful way for us to make the best use of that time?”

In a world that’s pushing ever-younger children toward engineering and science, and handing them gadgets to learn with, one tiny private school in Whitehall is purposely moving in the opposite direction.

Mater Dei Academy (Latin for “Mother of God”) does have computers, but only on the teachers’ desks. Computerized whiteboards hang in the classrooms, but they aren’t used constantly — more often it’s the dry-erase boards or individual paper workbooks.

Mater Dei’s method of teaching, called the classical approach, is what Curriculum Director Mary Amorose calls “countercultural.” It’s a systematic method, first of memorization and then learning to reason, and it was used widely for hundreds of years.

“It works,” Amorose said. “The Founding Fathers learned this way. … It teaches you to think, which is what I liked.”

The K-8 Catholic school, which has rented space for the past 46 years from Whitehall’s Faith Lutheran Church, has always been traditional. It was founded, in fact, as a reaction to changes from the Vatican in the 1960s, including allowing Mass in the vernacular, that caused some turmoil. Mater Dei is independent from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Columbus.

Amorose said she has always liked the idea of classical education but was motivated to finally make the switch after attending a convention in Louisville last summer on the topic. She said hundreds of school officials attended from across the nation, many from small private schools like Mater Dei.

At 8 a.m., the student body — 19 children in shirts and ties or plaid jumpers — convenes in the lunchroom. Wednesday morning prayer consisted of three decades of the rosary. Henry Wilson, 8, first led the “Hail Mary” chant in English, but halfway through, 12-year-old Megan Brown took over: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus …”

Each classroom has a photo of the pope and a small font of holy water by the door. Religion classes are taught daily. The school will take students of any religious persuasion, as long as families understand that the Catholic faith is emphasized, said Camille Wolf, admissions director.

First- and second-graders stood for recitation, naming the continents, oceans and U.S. time zones. Henry giggled wildly when he got the last time zone correct: “Mountain!”

“At this age, memorization is what they’re best at,” Wolf said. “Their minds are little sponges.” They learn grammar and phonics, read informational texts and memorize facts. The second-graders start learning Latin.

Though it’s about as far from a STEM school as it can get, all Mater Dei students learn “rigorous” math, Amorose said, and science lessons that gradually build on the history of science and the scientific method.

By third and fourth grade, children are able to process the more-nuanced themes of mythology and fairy tales. By the upper grades, they move into literature that teaches morals. The older children are reading “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis.

On a recent Wednesday, seventh- and eighth-graders reviewed the fall of ancient Greece for an upcoming test. Five students laughed and corrected one another and asked questions.

Picking up the Latin has been rough going for the older kids, who didn’t start it in the earlier grades. “At first, I did not like a second of it,” said Lauren Milliken, 14. “I guess I didn’t have a good attitude about it. … Now it’s fine.”

Wolf predicted that the STEM craze in education will fade in a few years. “Technology is moving way too fast for the curriculum,” she said.

The school tries to be as little beholden to government as possible, Wolf said, including not accepting state private-school vouchers. The tradeoff is that it isn’t constrained to state learning standards and testing.

Mater Dei charges $4,200 a year for one child, but gives a discount for multiple children and caps tuition at $5,700 per family.

Nineteen students is a little too small to be sustainable, Wolf said, but she called it a “building year.” In the past, Mater Dei has taught up to 60 children.