If a purchase happened that you did not mean to make — or your child got through the gate somehow — here is exactly how it works, in plain words.
Everything bought inside an App Store app is sold by Apple, not by us. Apple charges your Apple ID, Apple holds the money, and Apple sends us a share of it later. We are never given your payment details, we cannot see your card, and we have no button anywhere that would return a payment to you. That is not us being unhelpful — it is genuinely how the App Store is built, and it is the same for every app on your iPhone.
What it means in practice: a refund has to be asked for from Apple, and it is Apple who decides whether to give it.
You can also do it on the device: open Settings, tap your name, then Media & Purchases → View Account → Purchase History, and report the problem from there. Either route reaches the same place.
Apple usually answers within a day or two, and sometimes takes up to a couple of weeks. The decision is theirs alone — we are not asked and cannot overrule it. In our experience Apple is reasonable about purchases a small child made by accident, so it is worth explaining plainly what happened.
A refund asks for money back that has already been taken. Cancelling stops the next payment from happening, and leaves the current period running until it expires. Both are worth doing if a subscription started by mistake.
Cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends, otherwise it renews once more first. If you are in the 3-day free trial, cancelling at least 24 hours before it ends means nothing is charged at all.
In Yummy Monsters, the subscription already sits behind a parental gate that asks for an adult year of birth. If you would rather in-app purchases were not possible on that device at all, iOS can switch them off completely:
Give Screen Time a passcode that is not the one your child watches you type, and use a different one from the device unlock code. It is also worth turning off Require Password → Always Require in the same section, so a purchase can never ride along on a recent sign-in.
Charged twice? Subscription not unlocking what it should? Restored a purchase and nothing happened? Write to me with the date of the purchase and which Apple ID it was on, and I will work it out with you. This is a one-person studio and I read every message myself.