What Every Dad Should Know, According to James Patterson
My husband reads to our children. It is, honestly, one of my favourite things about him. We have always alternated nights because we both enjoy the very special closeness you get when reading a story and we also know the benefits from reading in our respective native language.
So when Mel Robbins sat down with James Patterson to talk about fatherhood, I expected to feel some warm agreement and move on. Instead, I found myself reflecting on it for a long time afterwards because I could not get over what I’d heard.
James Patterson has sold over 300 million books. He is one of the most commercially successful authors in history. And what he talks about with the kind of fire you usually only see in founders and athletes is this: fathers being absent from reading with their children. The absence of it. The cost of that absence. And what he has been doing – using his own money, his own publishing connections, his own celebrity – to change it.
This is not a post about guilt. It is a post about what presence actually looks like, and what it makes possible.
Table of Contents
What Is This Episode About?
Mel Robbins invited James Patterson to talk about his collaboration on parenting books for fathers – practical, funny, short books designed to be readable by parents who don’t consider themselves readers. But the conversation quickly goes somewhere deeper.
Patterson’s core argument is that fathers have been largely absent from the reading-with-children conversation. Reading to children has historically been coded as a mother’s job. Bedtime stories, picture books, library visits – these are spaces where dads are underrepresented and, Patterson says, often held back by their own sense of not belonging there.
The cost, he argues, is enormous. Not just for literacy (though the evidence on that is stark – children who are read to regularly are dramatically better readers, better communicators, better at understanding other people). But for connection. For the specific kind of relationship that can only be built in those quiet moments when you are sharing a story together.
He has written books specifically designed to draw fathers into that space. Short. Gripping. Funny. Books that don’t ask dads to become someone they’re not – just to show up and turn a page.
How This Changed My Life
I want to be honest about something. I have spent a lot of time, especially in the years when our children were very small, thinking about my role as the emotional anchor in our family. The one who manages the routines, knows which teacher is which, tracks the appointments, reads the parenting books (all of them, obviously, because apparently that is my hobby).
This episode made me examine a quieter assumption I had not realised I was carrying: that my husband’s job was to be there and my job was to be intentional. That I was the one who would read the books about conscious parenting and he would – very lovingly, very warmly – do the fun stuff.
Patterson made me see that the fun stuff is the intentional stuff. That sitting with your child reading a ridiculous book about a dog with a jetpack is not a lesser form of presence than the NVC-informed conversation about feelings (Marshall Rosenberg). It is a form of connection I had undervalued. And I had not noticed that I was undervaluing it.
My husband does not need me to share this with him. He already knows. He already does it. But I needed to hear it – to shift something in myself about what “good parenting” is allowed to look like.
The Three Things Patterson Talks About That Matter Most
Connection before correction. Patterson talks about the relationship between parents and children as the foundation of everything else. You cannot guide a child you are not connected to. You cannot set limits with someone who does not feel safe with you. Gordon Neufeld (Hold on to Your Kids) says the same thing in a different register: attachment first, everything else second. Patterson’s version of that is: read together first. Everything else can wait.
Presence over perfection. This is not a podcast episode about being a perfect parent. Patterson is, by his own admission, far from perfect. He talks about mistakes, about times he was not there, about the gap between intention and action. What he advocates is simple: show up. Put down the phone. Turn the pages. That’s it.
Reading is a gift with a very long shelf life. A child who has been read to regularly (not just at school, not just from the curriculum) but at home, in bed, in the car, in the garden – grows up with a relationship with stories that nothing else can replicate. Patterson talks about this in terms of empathy, in terms of vocabulary, in terms of the capacity to imagine lives different from your own. And he talks about it with a kind of quiet urgency that I found genuinely moving.
Why Fathers Specifically?
Patterson makes an interesting argument about why he focuses on fathers rather than parents in general. It is not because mothers are doing fine and don’t need support. It is because the gap in father engagement with reading is so significant, and so culturally reinforced, that it needs addressing specifically and directly.
There is something about the way he puts it that stuck with me: dads often don’t feel like they belong in the reading-together space. They haven’t been invited. The books are not written for them. The messaging around children’s literacy tends to reach mothers first. So Patterson writes books that reach dads – and he does it in exactly the same way he writes his thrillers: short chapters, high stakes, irresistible first lines.
It is, honestly, genius. Meeting people where they are (Mel Robbins) is always more effective than asking them to become someone they’re not.
Practical Takeaways
1. If you’re a mother, notice your assumptions. Do you treat your partner’s reading time with the children as a nice extra – or as equally essential to your own more “intentional” parenting? This episode gently challenged that for me.
2. Make reading together ridiculously low-stakes. Patterson’s books for fathers are funny, short, and completely non-precious. The goal is not to teach your child profound lessons. The goal is to share something together. The lessons arrive anyway.
3. If you’re a father, you’re already doing the right thing by reading this. The fact that you are curious about connection with your children means you’re halfway there. The other half is just showing up. Not perfectly. Just consistently.
4. Find books that suit both of you. The best book for reading together is the one both parent and child actually want to read. Start with funny. Start with fast. Start with whatever makes your child lean in. The rest follows.
5. Connection is built in small moments, not grand gestures. Fifteen minutes every evening, or three times a week, or just whenever the mood is right – this is enough. The Slight Edge (Jeff Olson) applies here as much as anywhere: small consistent actions over time compound into something extraordinary.
Why This Belongs in Heart
Heart is the section of this blog where I write about the people I love most and how to love them better. Every book and podcast I put here has, in some way, made me a better parent, a better partner, a better presence in my own family.
This episode belongs here because it reminded me of something I needed to remember: that the ordinary, quiet, slightly messy business of just sitting together with a book is one of the most profound things any parent can do for a child. No curriculum required. No training. No expertise.
Just show up. Turn the page. Be there.
Notes from Soph | Learning, not perfection.
Et toi? Do you have a reading memory with a parent that you still carry? Or do you read with your own children now? Come and tell me about it in the Notes from Soph community on Skool – this is exactly the kind of conversation I love to have there.
Source Details: The Mel Robbins Podcast: Episode 20, What Every Dad Should Know Mel Robbins with James Patterson | 2024
🎙 Listen on melrobbins.com or search “Mel Robbins Podcast” on Apple Podcasts / Spotify
