This chapter uses children’s writings to argue that age must be considered as a hugely limiting modifier of experiential expertise; of how it was lived and felt, and how it could be used. Despite substantive policy and media interest in gifted children in the mid-to-late twentieth century, gifted children’s testimonies were typically published only when conforming to specific visions of the appropriate precocious child. Nonetheless, the chapter also argues, gifted young people did exert expertise within voluntary spaces that were meaningful to them. Many young people enjoyed participating in these spaces, despite their limited influence. Others used these spaces to experiment with lively written critique of adult authority. Linking to this collection’s central framing, then, this chapter shows that young people labelled “gifted” were able to “fare well” within a broader “state of welfare”, even if their specific needs were not always catered for in the institutions of the “welfare state”. Yet the chapter shows, also, that the holding of experiential expertise did not guarantee that children could “fare well”; many found this expertise a burden, rejected it, or sought to offer themselves “self-care” while negotiating their distinct new identity as “gifted”.