Im still looking into this for you anyway, ive raised it with the developers, but from looking at the shortcode, version 1.6.6 doesnt have the parent option available.
as for exluding the featured category, you would need to do this on a page, as you cant exclude certain categories in the default looop.
so what you do for this is, you set the product as featured in the quick edit screen, there is a tick box for featured
and use the following shortcode
[featured_products per_page="12" columns="4"]