Children suffer from stress, just like adults. Yet, their psychological response to stress depends on their developmental stage. Young children mainly seek support from adults or use distraction whereas older children can try to put things into perspective or search for solutions when there is a problem. In all developmental stages, however, there are inter-individual differences between children in how they respond to negative events: some children find adaptive ways of coping whereas others fail to reduce their stress or even worsen it (for example by worrying). For some children, coping with stress proves to be such a difficulty that physical symptoms arise. For example, up to twenty-five percent of the children regularly experiences symptoms of fatigue, headache, or abdominal complaints
Yoga might help achieve this. It is suggested that yoga improves attention and emotional control as well as affects the nervous system, making the parasympathetic nervous system more dominant and stabilizing the autonomic nervous system to enhance resistance to the effects of stress. Research in adults shows individuals who practice yoga indeed become more resilient to stress and have a decreased risk for various diseases, such as cardiorespiratory diseases. The research on the effects of yoga on children with respect to stress-associated physical symptoms is limited in quantity and quality. Further, a lot of research focused on yoga's effects on childhood has been carried out in India.