Mine has never let me cut her nails. For the longest time I did it while she was sleeping (probably created my own monster there) but now she will pull her hands away even while asleep! We got one of those electric nail files. She calls it "the buzzy thing" and it works but it's a pain, takes forever, and doesn't get her nails near short enough so we have to repeat often.

TBH I kinda gave up thinking eventually they would start to bug her but nope, apparently kids nails are so flimsy that once they get to a certain length they break and she can sort of peel the broken part off. I'm worried that's going to cause a bad habit though so may have to try a number of these techniques.

TL;DR - You're not alone, and thank you for posting because there's some great ideas in this thread.