This document describes techniques and devices to reduce energy consumption and network traffic related to polling for buffered data packets (e.g., messages) between devices in a wireless mesh network. Based on the requirements of an end device that sleeps to conserve power, a parent device receives and buffers data packets addressed to the end device until the end device is awake. The end device periodically wakes-up to transmit application data, such as a sensor reading or a status message, to the parent device. By including an indication of pending data at the parent device in an acknowledgement the transmission of by end device, additional data request messages and acknowledgements can be reduced or eliminated to improve the battery life of the end device and reduce network traffic on the mesh network.