Due to the damage of cerebral cortex, the cognitive ability, thinking ability and adaptability of mentally retarded students are generally low, and some students are accompanied by physical disabilities, and their behavior activities are often restricted to a certain extent. In addition, some students are overindulged by their families, forming a strong dependence, often saying no, no, and dare not even think about things. There are also a few parents of mentally retarded students who think that they can't learn anything like this. They have arranged everything since childhood, or simply abandoned it. Over time, it has seriously affected students' self-confidence, physical and mental development and defect compensation. In fact, it can be said that children are willing to take responsibility within their power, which can be said to be their nature. Adults should turn off the lights when they go out, and children will say I did. If encouraged, children will get into the habit of turning off the lights when they go out and take it as their responsibility. Another example: wipe the table and wash the dishes after dinner, pour a glass of water for my father and hit my mother on the back. Children who take on these responsibilities will also feel very happy. Because he has contributed to this family, and because he is a member needed by other family members, he feels the value of his existence. Many parents are not aware of this. When teachers send their children to school, they find that children can't really know themselves, appreciate themselves and realize the value of their existence because of psychological and ideological defects. The most prominent performance in educational activities is the lack of self-confidence and sense of responsibility. Therefore, as a special education teacher, we must try our best to help mentally retarded students build their self-confidence.

First of all, we should guide students to learn to appreciate themselves in educational activities, stimulate students' self-confidence, and cultivate and establish the ideology that I can do what I can.

In education and teaching, according to each student's mental disability, physical condition and adaptability, effective plans are made in the aspects of behavior habits, cultural knowledge learning and self-care ability, so that each student can have a sense of accomplishment and experience that he is capable. There is a student in my class who always says: I can't clean! So is homework. When handing me the notebook, I always say whether it is written correctly, and so on. These are all manifestations of students' lack of confidence. In view of this situation, when students do things, I take an encouraging way to affirm everything that students do. As long as they are willing to do it, I will give timely praise and encouragement to the students who do it. In this way, students will be willing to take the initiative to undertake what they can, and over time, students' self-confidence will be established. I remember once, I don't know who threw a lot of scraps of paper in the classroom, so I said in class: The classroom is so dirty, who will clean it? As soon as I finished, a student picked up a broom and began to sweep. After I watched her sweep, I showed it to other students in the class and asked them: Did you sweep it clean? The students said in unison: clean! At this time, I seized the opportunity, followed the trend and told her that you are really capable! You like work so much, so your home must be very clean, right? As long as you clean it carefully, you can clean it up. Doing other things is the same, as long as you do it seriously, you will certainly do it well. I hope everyone can learn from her and do everything well. At this time, I saw that she was cheerful and more confident in herself, and she was more active in sweeping the floor in the future.

Secondly, we should pay attention to methods and give priority to encouragement to enhance students' self-confidence. Educator Steward pointed out that the art of teaching is not to impart skills, but to inspire, awaken and inspire. Although mentally retarded students have cognitive defects, they also have a sense of honor and self-esteem, and they are all eager to get the attention and affirmation of teachers. If a child lives with encouragement, he will show confidence. Therefore, no matter what progress students have made, even a little, they should be praised and encouraged in time. To do this, there must be a correct method. The correct method will make the teaching process conform to students' cognitive process, suit students' psychological characteristics, greatly increase students' interest in learning, constantly explore problems, and thus get better results.

Moreover, in education and teaching, we should pay attention to the guidance of methods, explain methods to students, reduce the difficulty, improve the probability of success, and make it easy for students to gain a sense of accomplishment in the process of learning, and self-confidence will naturally be established.

For example, when teaching students to know and write the number 3, let them look at the cards in their ears first, and then teach them to read the jingle: 3.

Listen to stories like ears, let them imagine and tell them 3.

Just like our ears, image analogy can deepen students' memory and stimulate their interest in learning, which not only reduces their learning difficulty, but also makes it easy to remember numbers when writing. However, at the beginning, many students couldn't write, let alone dare to write. They showed me every number they wrote and said they didn't write well. At this point, I asked them to rewrite it. Then a classmate wrote one and came to me again. Some students just sat quietly, and the classroom was noisy. So I carefully found a slightly decent article from everyone's row and praised it: this article is well written. At this time, he was satisfied. He may feel that he has the ability to write well, with a bright smile on his face, and at the same time he has found an evaluation target for himself. So he sat down and wrote slowly, comparing while writing, which not only cultivated students' good writing habits, but also enhanced their self-confidence.

In short, special education teachers should adopt methods suitable for students' cognitive characteristics in the process of school education and activities, create and provide favorable conditions for students, enhance students' self-confidence, and make students' physical and mental development in a good atmosphere.