Wise man following dad's route (7)
I believe the answer is:
passage
'route' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'wise man following dad's' is the wordplay.
'wise man' becomes 'sage' (sage is a kind of wise man).
'following' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'dad's' becomes 'pas' ('pa' can be a synonym of 'dad').
'sage' after 'pas' is 'PASSAGE'.
(Other definitions for passage that I've seen before include "Alley - corridor" , "Piece of writing" , "Way through something" , "Transit - part of book etc" , "Section of musical or literary work" .)