HGTV Nicole Curtis' two sons, Ethan and Harper, won't appear on the new season of HGTV'sRehab Addict Curtis tells PEOPLE she wants to give her children "privacy" Ethan appeared on the show when he was younger, but Curtis jokes his friends "still make fun of him" Nicole Curtishas shared her motherhood journey withRehab Addictfans — but hertwo sonswon't be showing up on the series' latest season. "I learned my lesson," the HGTV star, 48, tells PEOPLE of involving her kids in her HGTV show. "I think there's one gift we can give our children, and I give them privacy. They're out in public with me a lot, and I shield them." Curtis welcomed Ethan in 1997 with her ex Steven Cimini, and Harper in 2015 with ex Shane Maguire. Ethan appeared on the show when he was younger, but Curtis says he isn't seeking more screen time on the home renovation series. "My son, when we first started the TV show years ago, we didn't have all the social media presence," she recalls. "He was in sixth grade, he thought it was cool, and his buddies thought it was cool to be on TV. And they still make fun of him because they're like, 'Oh my gosh, we can see you as a young boy, you had braces' and all this. But I won't do that again. My boys are my most precious, precious things in the entire world to me." Nicole Curtis/Instagram She adds that Ethan, now 27, is married "to a lovely woman." "You'll see I refer to them a lot," she admits. "I talk about my children a lot. I'm that mom. I mention my children every breath I have." "You'll see little hints of them," she adds of the ninth season, which premiered Tuesday, June 24. "But that's something cool for me to have, and I think it's a gift to my children that if they want to be on TV, they could be on TV, but not on this one." Nicole Curtis/Instagram Nicole Curtis/Instagram In the new episodes, which are airing after a three-year hiatus from TV for Curtis, she restores both a poorly flipped 1890s Wyoming home and a troubled Detroit property that had been invaded by squatters. Her extended break from filmingcame after a major personal "setback,"the exact nature of which she's keeping private for now. "I had a setback in my life that just rocked me to the core, and it was one of those moments where I thought, how do I get through this one?" Curtis tells PEOPLE. "I prayed on it and it was just devastating for me. I had to make a decision right there and then like, 'Okay, we're going to let this affect us for a very long time, or we're going to pick it up and go.'" Buying the Wyoming house on a whim was part of what pulled her out of that dark moment, she says. Curtis calls this latest installment of the show "an evolved version," "I'm no longer this little poor mommy in Minneapolis driving around with this pickup truck with two dogs and a kid," she says. "But I'm still me, I'm still Nicole Curtis from Detroit, and I want you to save that building and we're going to do it." Read the original article onPeople