When you're a kid, you don’t believe anything, do you? It may be because we know some of what adults tell us is obviously false. It gives less credibility to the things that are actually true.

"Don't eat that chocolate. Didn't you hear Daddy? He said it's bad for your teeth!"

"Oh yeah, what would he know? Remember I made that face and he said if the wind changed I'd stay like that? And then the wind changed, and I didn't, so..."

In a way, it's good. We learn to be cynical and not believe everything we are told. But at the same time, we don't have the experience to know how to apply that cynicism. So it becomes blanket disregard for advice, which is a bad thing. Because the mistakes of our childhood can make for problems when we're older. And then we have to deal with them as adults, when it costs more.

"Don't Eat That, It'll Make Your Teeth Fall Out"

As a kid, you can afford to lose some teeth, because new ones grow in their place. Which is a big mistake on nature's part, because it teaches you to be pretty cavalier with your teeth. If decay leads to a point where you lose a grown-up tooth, there's not going to be a new one.

This used to mean dentures were your only hope - and a denture is not ideal, for many reasons. Fortunately, science has stepped in where nature and your parents let you down. Dental implants are better than dentures in every way possible. It's not quite a new real tooth, but it may as well be.

"Go To Bed, You Need Your Beauty Sleep"

I mean, as a kid it just sounds stupid, doesn't it? The idea that you can sleep to make yourself look better? Especially when your elder brother at college sleeps until 1pm every day and looks like a melted waxwork. So you sit up after lights out reading with a torch, or playing a handheld video game. Beauty sleep? That's just silly.

Except it's not at all. Cellular repair takes place while you sleep. Lack of sleep affects your skin. Now, when you're a kid, you have a surprising amount of ability to recover from mistakes. But the older you get, the more you wear those habits on your face. So, yes, you should have listened at the time. But if you didn't, make sure you do now. Drink plenty of water and supplement collagen, too.

"Don't Rub Your Eyes, You'll Get Wrinkles"

When you're about twelve, any mention of wrinkles can be laughed off - by the way, that doesn't cause "laugh lines". But there is actually a lot of truth to the idea that repeated rubbing of the skin around the eyes will cause wrinkling of the skin. You will thin out the skin by doing this, and it will wrinkle more easily as time goes on.

The tips above regarding sleep and fluids are applicable here - you need to nourish your skin to stop it from getting damaged any further. Also, keep up a regular moisturizing regime to give the skin more flexibility. You can't hold off those lines forever, but you can sure push them into the future. We may not have thought about it when we were kids, but it's never too late to do something.