Mr. Elcharfa often tells his children they are American first, before they are Lebanese.

“We tell them this is your country,” he said. “You’re lucky you’re born here.”

But sometimes, in school, classmates only see the children’s Muslim names and Arab heritage. In the hallways in Abubeckr’s school, boys will sometimes make sounds of bombs exploding and yell out “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great” — as he walks by. On the bus after school, a classmate once said to him, “You’re a terrorist, and your mom is a mastermind bomber.”

He told the principal the next day, but he did not tell his parents. He is used to the jeering at this point, Abubeckr said, and does not want his mother to “make it a bigger deal than it is.” His father has taught him to tell an adult, but not to react physically or verbally. “If you ignore it, it’s better,” Abubeckr said.

But Mr. Elcharfa sees the taunts taking a toll on his children. They frequently ask him not to speak in Arabic in front of their friends. After the explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan last month, his 15-year-old, Ismail, told him, “That’s your Islam, Baba.”

Abubeckr, who was in Italian class when he heard the news, thought to himself, It was a Muslim, wasn’t it? “I was like, here we go again,” he said, recounting that day while sitting with his father in the family’s living room.

“Why do you say a Muslim; why don’t you say a person?” Mr. Elcharfa asked his son.

These are the moments that worry Mr. Elcharfa and his wife. They fret that their children are starting to distance themselves from their religion and their culture. These are also the moments when the couple’s parenting styles clash.

Mr. Elcharfa wants his children to be freethinkers. He does not want them to be practicing Muslims simply because they inherited the religion from their parents. Sometimes, he said, he wishes their religion could be hidden from view. He said he felt pangs of regret for giving them Muslim names: “Why didn’t I name them Tony or George?”