Quick answer
A father asks his son for wisdom and gives an unusually honest reason: it would let him answer the people who mock him.
Read both lines
The direct address returns here for the only time in the chapter, and with it the voice of chapters one through nine. What is striking is the motive. The father does not appeal to the son's own good, which is his usual argument; he says his own reputation is exposed and that the son's life is the answer he would have to give.
That is more vulnerable than it first appears, and it does two things at once. It admits the father is being reproached, and it tells the son plainly that his conduct is public in a way he may not have considered. The verse does not make the son responsible for his father's standing, and read as leverage it would become exactly the kind of pressure this catalog refuses elsewhere. Read as an admission, which is what the grammar supports, it is a parent telling the truth about what is at stake for him.
Related: Proverbs 10:1 · Proverbs 23:15–16 · Proverbs 29:3 · Proverbs 17:25
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.