Work around ask to buy for free apps
It appears that Apple don't want to change the function of the ask to buy function. This means that there are only two options. 1) They have to ask for permission to download everything even the free stuff or 2) they can down load everything even the apps that cost a lot.
When I look in the communities pages I can see that a lot of people have asked this question, so I wonder why you don't make an option 3) ask for buy on non free apps.
One could get the idea that the reason for that is that you want us to get tired of this function and turn it off and thereby it is our own fault that our kids end up buying expensive stuff. But of course that was never your intentions
I would ask if there is a work around of this problem buy setting a limit on how much the kid can spend per transaction and then set this limit to a very low number?
A serious company would listen to the request from it's customers and try to find a solution
I look forward to hear your actions on this matter.