I know you feel like everyone is being unreasonable about this, but instead of trying to change their minds, consider it market research: parents on hacker news overwhelmingly distrust iAP, and maybe that means some other form of try-before-you-buy would be more appropriate for kids' apps.
I believe windows phone market place and android allow you to do some sort of trial but I don't think you can do that in apple app store. I'm not 100% sure about this so please correct me if I am wrong.